LSD ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

There was no shortage of political, social, and medical disinformation about LSD, as this example, from 1969 shows:For Kicks, a Lobotomy "Those most ghastly suspicions about LSD have been confirmed clinically: The use of LSD--even once--renders a man or woman unfit to contemplate parenthood . . .-- possibly for life. Last week, doctors at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D. C., released the results of a study of pregnant LSD users. Only 22 of 65 expectant mothers (many of them teenagers) made normal deliveries of children. Those who aborted produced the. sort of freak fetuses which medical science one year ago predicted would he common among LSD users. Most of the fetuses showed brain damage. In several cases, the brain of the unborn child was outside the skull. Some of the young mothers had taken LSD once. Some had taken il many times. The same was true of the fathers, not all of whom were known. Some had taken the drug recently. Some had not had LSD for months. The conclusion is that LSD is a cause of chromosome aberration. It is tragic to think that a person at the tender age of 16 might remove himself forever as the potential parent o! normal children. The burden which these yet unborn but doomed children might bear is even more tragic."http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/25639047/LSD lore is mythic with perceptions, sentiments and opinions about the substance. Besides the old political disinformation and cliches, people envision mystical enlightenment and heightened sensual perceptions. As a mythical drug LSD can be everything to everyone, a focal point contesting social, political and metaphysical realities.

Sandoz LSD; Ergot infected wheat

It's Still a MysteryWhat
happened in Athens was NOT "shamanism" which is why it is so important.
This was NOT the taking of hallucinogens by "witch doctors" as is
widespread around the globe. It was at the *heart* of a very
sophisticated culture, in which all but "convicted
murderers" were expected to participate. What the HIEROPHANTS knew was
precisely how to render *ergot* non-toxic, so that they could "dose"
5000 people, all for one "mysterious" night per year.

No,
it did not die with them at all -- it continued all the way to
Nietzsche in the mid-1800s and was then turned into synthetic chemistry
by "occultists" in Basel in the 1930s, who were followers of Nietzsche's
*archivist* which is why the deliberate supplying of large quantities
of LSD (and then later precursors) by the KGB in the 1960s is perhaps
even more important than what happened at Eleusis.1500 years ago was only the beginning, since the Mysteries moved to Constantinople when the [Eleusis] temple was sacked and from there to the South of France and beyond. The Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony kept it going throughout the Middle Ages. Nietzsche was an "Eleusinian" initiate, as was Jacob Bachofen, Rudolph Steiner and Ezra Pound (and, I suspect a few Popes along the way.) And, the Bavarian ILLUMINATI didn't give their Ingolstadt HQ the "secret" name of Eleusis for nothing

Domenicus van Wijnen, Temptation of St. Anthony, 17th century

ROSICRUCIAN MYSTERY REVIVAL or KGB PSYOP?

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” --Tolkien

"The thought here ... shows the connectionbetween decay and resurrection.Fruit must decay before new seed can develop....Here too the fundamental trend of the Book of Changes is expressed:the light principle is represented as invinciblebecause in its sinking it creates new life,as does a grain of wheat when it sinks into the earth."I Ching (Wilhelm-Baynes translation p. 500)

"Blessed is he who has seen these thingsbefore he goes beneath the earth;for he understands the end of mortal life,and the beginning (of a new life) given of God."Pindar Fragment 102

New Media mavin, MARK STAHLMAN is a venture capitalist focused on next generation computer/networking platforms and business cycle and technical analysis for the past 25 years. He co-founded the Newmedia Laboratory, NYNMA, the Non-Linear Circle and Technorealism. He was also the investment banker at Alex Brown & Sons who brought America Online and Creative Labs public, and the first Wall Street analyst to recommend Sun Microsystems. His educational background includes a B.S. in genetics at UW Madison, with Graduate work in theology and molecular biology. In his professional life on Wall Street, he was a "technology strategist." He began as a software entrepreneur in the early 70s and first met Bill Gates in 1977. His overall concern is the impact of "technological environments" on the people who live *inside* of them. He now studies the social impact of the computers & networks that came after LSD, noting “Tim Leary was correct that "PC's are the LSD of the '90s". Twenty years later, we still don't understand what these technologies are doing to us.” With a keen eye for pattern recognition, he has developed a novel theory based on these off-the-record interviews and extant academic and popular sources. He recently decided to make it public so others might pursue viable connections. Not everyone will agree with Stahlman's premise in details or theory, but it has an internal coherence that sustains the broadstrokes he has painted. More than a possibility, he demonstrates evidence for plausibility in a Cold War context.He contends, "As long as they CIA *controlled* the PRODUCTION they could use it however they wanted to (i.e. "dosing" the elites in order to "end war") -- it was when the KGB/Spofa started to make it in LARGE quantities the CIA had to shut down MKULTRA etc . . ."Sandoz was "controlled" by the CIA, so they could only make whatever the CIA "let them" make. Quantities were sharpely limited. The MASSIVE supplying of the West with LSD in 1965-67 was a "strategy" by the KGB to "disrupt" their Cold War enemies and wasn't a "bandwagon" effect at all. Who knows? The people who actually do the research (which means asking the people who were involved what they did and why, which I've been doing since 1975).The CIA got Eli Lilly to come up with an alternative method -- in case they wanted to use LSD as a "chemical weapon." That never happened. It was the KGB who turned LSD into such a "weapon" against the West -- the results of which are what we (who were all "targets" of that warfare) now call the "counter-culture" . . .

Text & Con Text

The following is a summary of an extensive collection of notes assembled over nearly 40 years as a result of interviews and experiences with over a hundred people, some living and some dead, regarding the fascinating history of LSD. My first personal encounter with LSD was in late 1967 and, off-and-on, I've been exploring its relation to human endeavors ever since.

This summary of the pre-history of LSD was first published in anticipation of the international symposium "LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug", held in Basel, Switzerland. It was compiled with a particular mind towards the conference theme, "The Spirit of Basel."

I have not exhaustively cross-checked all the details and make no claims about the accuracy or completeness of what follows. In addition to a great deal of published material in many fields, these notes are largely the compiled accounts of many discussions with scholars, witnesses, psychonauts, literati, initiates, spies and acolytes.

Given the nature of each individual recollection, they may very well contain inconsistencies and contradictions. Many participants requested anonymity. While I have dispensed with the customary "probably" and "very likely," it would be advisable to consider these notes as mere starting points for further, more rigorous, investigations. Naturally, there will be many points of view.

These days a conspiratorial spin is in vogue for narrating the history of the psychedelic movement; perhaps it offsets the earlier zealous idealism. But, I am much more interested in "telling the story" than I am in "convincing anyone" -- however, to be sure, all the best available information does need to be brought into that story. So far, it has not. Indeed, it has been deliberately excluded. I do not intend to write a book based on this research and I'm happy to assist others with their projects. In addition, I'm limited by only having English at my disposal so I'm always grateful for help with references that are only available in other languages. Lastly, since ergot grows worldwide, it seems only reasonable that ergot preparations also have a long history outside the "Western" tradition. The unique association between ergot and Athens as well as the urge to connect initiatory rites with presumed-to-be ancient practices weaves ergot preparations into the history of esoteric initiations throughout millennia in the West. Perhaps there is a similar pre-history to LSD in the East? The Muttercorn Though some argue otherwise, many consider LSD a "sacred" chemical. That means that its usage is ultimately a *religious* matter that is deeply associated with "ancient wisdom." This knowledge should lead us to ask the simple question, "Who in the 20th century might have wanted to start an "archaic revival' using LSD and why would they want to do that?" This inquiry immediately raises issues with the "cover-stories" that

it was an "accident" (i.e. the "official" story)

that it was spread by the CIA to undermine the anti-war movement

(i.e. the "Acid Dreams" hypothesis), and

that it was a "mind-control" plot (i.e. the Jan Irvin hypothesis), etc.

So what was it? If you don't ask the questions, then you will not get the answers. Much more plausible, given all that we know, is that the introduction of LSD was an "occult" religious activity -- driven by what Gurdjieff called "the battle of the magicians" in the early 20th century. It was literally a battle for the soul of Western Civilization, which arguably had begun in Athens millennia before. The publication of Leo Perutz's "St. Peter's Snow" novel in 1933, all on its own, puts the "lie" to the "accident" theory. The dystopic novel described a “secret experiment to make a mind-altering drug.” As described in TheRoad to Eleusis, “To begin with, the so-called Saint Peter’s snow, the white mildew which occurs on wheat which gives the novel its name and which is the organic precursor to the synthetic psychoactive drug being developed by Baron von Malchin (much to the puzzlement and curiosity of Georg Amberg, the protagonist doctor of the novel) is a clear reference to ergot (claviceps purpurea (Fr.)), a fungal growth and a parasite on rye as well as barley, wheat and on certain wild grasses. By 1935, when Harman and Hubbard (who, of course, worked closely together) believed this began, the *religious* implications of a synthetic derived from ergot was public knowledge. No esoteric rituals or handshakes were needed -- just a chemistry lab.Willis Harman, a senior social scientist at the Stanford Research Institute known as SRI International, and the initiator of the institute’s futures research program (and later the president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences), suggested, in an interview on ABC radio in 1977, that the origins of LSD began with an esoteric or mystical movement specifically following the twentieth century mystic Rudolf Steiner.[28]Willis Harman, quoted in Peter Fry and Malcolm Long (eds.), Beyond the Mechanical Mind (Based on the radio series ‘…And Something Else is Happening’), Sydney: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1977, 101-2.http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/Those who knew Al Hubbard would describe him as just a "barefoot boy from Kentucky," who never got past third grade. But as a young man, the shoeless hillbilly was purportedly visited by a pair of angels, who told him to build something. He had absolutely no training, "but he had these visions, and he learned to trust them early on," says Willis Harman, [former] director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, CA."Al was desperately searching for meaning in his life," says Willis Harman. Seeking enlightenment, Hubbard returned to an area near Spokane, WA, where he'd spent summers during his youth. He hiked into the woods and an angel purportedly appeared to him in a clearing. "She told Al that something tremendously important to the future of mankind would be coming soon, and that he could play a role in it if he wanted to," says Harman. "But he hadn't the faintest clue what he was supposed to be looking for."http://www.fargonebooks.com/high.html Hofmann et al's publication of The Road to Eleusis tells us what was really going on -- an attempt to revive the Eleusinian Mysteries, which by the 19th century had become the go-to initiatory trope for the "Rosicrucians", who ultimately gathered under the banner of Anthroposophy, etc. The Steinerites still stage Eleusinian "Mystery Plays" in Dornach, at their HQ in a suburb of Basel. Yes, Sandoz is also in Basel. Intelligence Arguably, we are all also aware that this "revival" didn't work. Given this "failure" and the "secret" religious motivations behind it, it should be no surprise that those involved aren't very anxious to take credit for what happened. I began my "investigative" research, shortly after I filed an FoIA request for the MKULTRA files (in parallel with John Marks and a few others) and read through the cartons of material -- which raised many more questions than they answered. I started with some CIA contacts that I had developed. They introduced me to some KGB contacts and the "real" story started to emerge -- likely because those I was talking to didn't want to go to their graves with the only version available coming from those (clearly "fake" and stage-managed) "documents." Subsequently, I've done dozens of interviews and at no point along the way did anyone with direct knowledge of these events try to convince me that the "official" story was the true one. Consistently, they told me that LSD was part of a "plot" to "save the world," hatched during WW II when it seemed very possible that Hitler could win the war. Alternate history, anyone? The Nazis were, of course, at their evil core, themselves an "occult" organization. The SS projected themselves as the revival of the "Round Table" -- which is why they were so committed to exterminating their rivals, with the Jewish Kabbalists at the top of that list. Herman Hess flew to Scotland to try to cement an "occult alliance" with the remnant of the Templars that he believed were still in charge of the British elites. That's also why they provided a tutor to the Dalai Lama and so on. Psychochemical Warfare The introduction of LSD was, according to those I spoke with, a version of *occult* “chemical warfare” -- following on the heels of the chemicals rained down on the trench-bound combatants in WW I, [and perhaps not unrelated to the intensive shell-shock research which followed in Britain]. We are the ones ultimately recruited to fight that war, so now it falls to us to write its history: Approximately 30-40 Czech doctors carried out thousands of experiments with LSD in the Communist era, over two decades. "One of the doctors, a man named Jiri Rubicek, was interested in the possible effects it could have. But no-one really knew - not even Sandoz knew at the time - what it was really good for. They knew it was really powerful, but they didn't really know how it would be useful. They asked doctors, if you can find some use for this - great."So there were many different projects, there were some where they created so-called model psychosis, to try to understand schizophrenia. There was this belief at the time that schizophrenic patients were undergoing a kind of permanent acid trip. They thought if psychologists, psychiatrists, medical students could experience the same thing then they would understand schizophrenia better." http://www.radio.cz/en/section/talking/could-study-of-czechoslovak-tests-lead-to-return-to-respectability-for-lsd There were a variety of projects, treating alcoholics, neurotics, depressives, artists, and psychotics with LSD. They deliberately concealed any mystical aspects that appeared. An LSD experiment was made on the Czechoslovak army to prepare against the US. This experiment was performed and shot in military hospital in Prague. Stan Grof has some particular insight as a former LSD researcher in Prague in the Soviet era: "Until 1961, this research involved Sandoz-supplied LSD. But Grof saw no reason why Czech scientists shouldn't be producing a native supply. Fatefully situated approximately 200 miles from Prague at this time was the Czech pharmaceutical company Spofa, whose chemists were talented synthesizers of various ergot alkaloids. Grof put in a request for the company to begin producing LSD; a request quickly approved by communist authorities. Soon thereafter began production of the only pharmaceutically pure LSD in the eastern bloc. (Sandoz was still producing the only pure LSD in the West.)." http://www.alternet.org/story/146393/how_stanislav_grof_helped_launch_the_dawn_of_a_new_psychedelic_research_era As far as I'm concerned, the "missing-link" for the widespread use of LSD (beginning around 1965) is the KGB -- making that the most important "untold" piece of the puzzle in terms of the real-world history that we are still trying to overcome today. Crowley and the SS, etc., not so much.Before 1933, ergotamine—an ergot alkaloid derivative, present in the sclerotia of the Claviceps purpurea fungus—had been isolated in its crystalline form by Arthur Stoll in 1918 at Sandoz laboratories, not far from Germany and Dachau (where the Dachau concentration camp was later to be established by the Nazi government), and Stoll patented the alkaloid. In 1917, Sandoz had granted Stoll, then a young Swiss chemist and a student of the Jewish German organic chemist Richard Willstätter,[16] the opportunity of setting up a laboratory to develop new bioactive drugs.[17] But the goal of isolating these alkaloids had been underway for more than fifty years prior to Stoll’s discovery, with Charles Tanret obtaining ergotinine cristalisee in 1875, and the Swiss pharmacist F. Kraft having, among discovering many other ergotamine alkaloids, extracted a fraction composed mainly of the ergotoxine group alkaloids, which he named ‘hydroergotonine’ in 1906. http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/ My best guess is that Stoll Sr. was a Steinerite "Rosicrucian" and that Hofmann was someone with similar propensities but probably more "freelance" with less organizational orientation. He was familiar with ergot used on the farm birthing livestock. Given the typical split between "esoteric" (i.e. private/secret) an "exoteric" (i.e. public/cover-story), I'm pretty sure Hofmann didn't think he was "lying" but rather keeping the important details among those who had a "need-to-know" -- on the basis that the "uninitiated" had no right to the information and would only "profane" it if they knew. In some of my interviews, for instance with Willis Harman, I got a lot because he apparently thought I came from a "higher level." A naive reporter/author would probably never get "inside" the situation for the simple reason that they cannot credibly enter into the conversation with sufficient "authority." Anyone with an "esoteric" orientation is capable of, even compelled to hide the "truth." Indeed, the ‘I-know-something-you-don't’ seems to be a major part of the psychology involved. This is, after all, why the story must be told, since those who have told it so far seem to be largely "esotericists" (or those who "respect" their “right-to-secrecy’). I don't know of anyone who point-blank asked Hofmann about the truth of alternative claims (as, for instance Marty Lee says he did *not* do and neither did people like Thom Lyttle or Morgan Russell when they had access to Hofmann) -- which is when the issue of deliberate deception tends to come up. I'm mostly interested in the "unwritten" history of psychedelics and some of you know me from my posts on the MAPS list, including my 2006 "Pre-History of LSD." My goal is to get the full story of psychedelics out. One way to deal with [those who mount inquisitions of “guilt by association” is to] grab the narrative back with more thoughtful research, since they mostly thrive on the "paranoia" and "coincidence" that still surrounds these "forbidden" topics. I suspect that a careful analysis of the "true" history -- much of which has been deliberately "hidden" -- is the only disinfectant that will work to help clean up the situation. Psychedelic POMO One topic I'm working on now is the influence of LSD on the French philosophical scene in the 1960s. Famously, Michel Foucault tripped in Death Valley in 1975. But, in 1970, he wrote an essay praising Gilles Deleuze where he compares the philosophical impact of LSD to opium. So, how early was his first trip? Could it have been as far back as the 1950s? What did LSD have to do with his interest in the history of "madness" (in an era where many referred to psychedelics as "psychotomemetics")? One of the major contributors then (and now through his "disciple" Slavoj Zizek) was Jacques Lacan. Lacan's early psychiatric work was associated with Jean Delay, in whose lab Lacan ran his weekly seminars from 1953-63. Delay is credited with coining the term "psychopharmacology" and experimented with mescaline, psilocybin and LSD. He's even mentioned by Hofmann in "My Problem Child." Yes, as the first President of the World Psychiatric Association, it is probably fair to say that he was involved in MKULTRA. Could the French "pomo" philosophers have gotten access to these psychedelics through French medical/psychiatric Cold War circles? And, how might these still-undocumented experiences have influenced their philosophy – their deconstruction paradigm? That's one of the chapters still to be written. Needless to say, there are many others . . . Summary of the Notes – Here is a rough "historical" outline of what seems to be missing -- 1) Rosicrucian-style "chemical" initiation became a widespread possibility in the 19th century, with the rise of synthetic chemistry. At the same time it became a widespread attraction with the rise of "occultism" driven by the electric media environment. Reference: Alchemy as personal transformation, Rosenkreutz "Chymical Wedding," James Webb "Occult Underground/Establishment," McLuhan "Laws of Media," synthesis of mescaline etc. 2) The "chemical" with the longest/deepest history of initiatory usage in the West is ergot -- stretching from Eleusinian Mysteries, through the Catholic Church into Rosicrucian masonry, etc. Dan Merkur relates it to the Holy Grail, death-rebirth, and visions of light: “All of the original grail romances, from Chrétien’s Conte del Graal through the Post-Vulgate Queste and Heinrich’s Crown, described the grail in terms that were appropriate for the hidden manna of the medieval church. The hidden manna was the secret of the grail.” He discusses the specific teachings of Philo of Alexandria, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux that refer to special meditations used with the “psychedelic sacrament.” Revelatory power coupled with the rational exercise of the mind facilitates a qualitatively enhanced state of religious transcendence in the seeker.

In The Mystery of Manna, Merkur describes evidence that the miraculous bread that God fed the Israelites in the wilderness was ergot-infused. Many religious authorities over the centuries have secretly known the identity and experience of manna and have left a rich record of their involvement with this sacred substance. Reference: Dan Merkur, The Psychedelic Sacrament; Hofmann et al "Road to Eleusis," Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony, Isenheim Altar, Hieronymus Bosch "Garden of Earthly Delights," St. Anthony's Fire, Illuminati HQ called "Eleusis." Jacob Bachofen, Nietzsche "Birth of Tragedy", etc. 3) Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy became a major Rosicrucian "conduit," emphasizing the importance of Eleusis by staging "Mystery" plays, provoking a "battle of the magicians" with the Nazis, who burned down the original Goetheneum in Dornach. Their response was the synthesis of LSD, by Anthroposophy-related chemists at Sandoz, as an anti-Hitler "peace pill," turning "alchemy" into 20th century occult "chemical" warfare. Reference: Use of chemicals in warfare, Steiner's autobiographical "Fritz" the plant-man, Schure "The Great Initiates," Steiner as both Goethe's and Nietzsche's archivist, Sandoz and plant-based pharmaceuticals, Bachofen and Paracelus as Basel-based initiates, St. Anthony hospitals in Basel. Use of mescaline in "occult" circles in Germany. Leo Perutz "St. Peter's Snow," etc. 4) There is a close affinity between the "intelligence services" and "secret societies" -- including both the US OSS/CIA and the Russian NKVD/KGB, with each drawing on long-standing associations with German "occult" influences. Picking up on the Steinerite opposition to Hitler, both the US and Russian began to experiment with "initiatory" chemicals during/before WW II. Reference: Allen Dulles posted in Zurich and later launching MKULTRA, Skull & Bones and OSS, Billington "The Icon and the Axe," Rosenthal "The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture," Blavatsky and Roerich," etc. 5) During the Cold War, these CIA/KGB "occultists" came to see LSD as a basis for establishing World Peace, in parallel to the USA/Russian attempts to use atomic weapons to achieve the same goal of establishing a "One World Government" by making all-out-war "unthinkable" -- leading to Pugwash and the United Nations, etc. Reference: Capt. Al Hubbard ("marvelous triple agent"), Cord (CIA and World Federalism) & Mary Pinchot Meyer (murder and dosing JFK), Tim Leary (as CIA asset), H.G. Wells "The Shape of Things to Come," Aldous Huxley "Doors of Perception," Esalen, hot-tub diplomacy, and Soviet "psychotronics," etc. 6) When the CIA got cold-feet and pulled out of LSD production (Sandoz, circa 1965), the KGB kept going with SPOFA supplying both the pharmaceutical "blue acid" and the chemical precursors for "underground" production. The San Francisco (Acid Tests), Los Angeles (Laurel Canyon), London (World Psychedelic Center) and Paris (Situationist) activities all relied on KGB sources for their "counter-cultural disruption." Reference: Owsley, Hollingshead, Leary, Trocchi, Stark, etc. 7) The French "pomo" scene was led by psychoanalysts, like Lacan and Gauttari, and had an early focus on "madness" w/ Foucault and had access to psychedelics through "medical" channels) . . . The *NEW* Center for Culture and Technology Jean Delay was Jacques Lacan's "mentor" and the leading French researcher on psychedelics . . . Although Delay’s works on psychopharmacology do not constitute the major part of his scientific contribution, they remain the most famous because of their scientific level as well as their topicality. Jean Delay invented the word "psychopharmacology" along with a whole field of research on psychological and behavioral modifications induced by drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin (1). http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=175748 Delay was chair of the first International Congress in Psychiatry held in Paris in 1950 and was elected member of the Académie de médicine in 1955. His neurological training is reflected in his dissertation on tactile agnosia and other work published in this area. He coined the term "neuroleptic" and introduced the use of reserpine into psychiatry. His interests extended to the use of antidepressants, and he completed his research on mescaline by studying LSD and psilocybin, which he referred to as "oneirogenics." He was also involved in the discovery of Largactil, used in psycho-pharmacology. In 1960 he chaired the first Congrès de médicine psychosomatique (Congress of Psychosomatic Medicine). Édouard Pichon introduced him to psychoanalysis before the Second World War during a brief training analysis. Delay retained a nuanced, nondoctrinaire attitude toward Sigmund Freud's work. During the Occupation, the psychoanalysts John Leuba, Georges Parcheminey, Jacques Lacan, and Marc Schlumberger worked in his department; after the war Jacques Lacan and André Green had a psychoanalytic practice there. His department also hosted Jacques Lacan's Wednesday seminars (from November 18, 1953, to November 20, 1963) and Friday seminars, until it was decided that they were no longer appropriate. http://nosubject.com/index.php?title=Jean_Delay Another significant, psychotherapeutically valuable characteristic of LSD inebriation is the tendency of long forgotten or suppressed contents of experience to appear again in consciousness. Traumatic events, which are sought in psychoanalysis, may then become accessible to psychotherapeutic treatment. Numerous case histories tell of experiences from even the earliest childhood, vividly recalled during psychoanalysis under the influence of LSD. This does not involve an ordinary recollection, but rather a true reliving; not a reminiscence, but rather a reviviscence, as the French psychiatrist Jean Delay has formulated it.http://www.maps.org/books/mpc/chapter4.htmlhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1044496/pdf/medhist00007-0087.pdf Medical History, 2002, 46: 221-240 LSD Therapy in Dutch Psychiatry: Changing Socio-Political Settings and Medical Sets STEPHEN SNELDERS and CHARLES KAPLAN* In an earlier version, The Pre-History of LSD, Stahlman makes the following points, all of which can be flushed out with research: 1) Appreciation for the psychotropic effects of ergot is older than the human race. Ergot spores and fungus have also been found in Neolithic caves throughout Europe and there is some evidence from Paleolithic times.. Gnostic Visions: Uncovering the Greatest Secret of the Ancient World, by Luke A. Myers It has been suggested by archaeologists that some of the Neolithic cave paintings found in Ireland were inspired either by ergot or other hallucinogenic fungi. Bog bodies from northwestern Europe may have been special individuals in their societies; their deaths have elements of sacrifice, including traces of hallucinogenic ergot in the belly and a careful postmortem positioning of the body. 2) In human pre-history, ergot was extensively used as an aid for mothers in childbirth and less frequently in the death process. 3) The close association between ergot and the fertility rites at Eleusis transformed this ancient birthing application into an enduring cult practice. It is well known that the Mysteries continued for almost two thousand years, during which time the Greek world evolved tremendously in both intellectual and religious aspects. The greatest intellects of the ancient world testified repeatedly to the salvific power of participation in the Mysteries--why then assume that those secret rites and teachings would not also have adapted to the times, so as to contain allusions to the deepest spiritual insights of which their devotees were capable? Scholars disagree widely over the significance, much less the contents [ergot?, divine mushroom?], of the kykeon. Some have maintained that it must have had a sacramental character involving a communion with, or assimilation of, the spirit of the deity (Loisy 69; Jevons 365ff.). This is the 'sober offering' of the mysteries. One's mind became 'sober,' enlightened.The barley added to the kykeon became magical in the following manner: it molded, grew ergot, the sclerotia, erysibe, 'rust,' the 'beard' which produced tiny entheogenic mushrooms, Claviceps purpurea. Clay sealings have been found at Knossos which reproduce molded barley in conjunction with lion-men, and several Palace tablets take cognizance of the barley beard in their accounting. A jasper prism stamp-seal was found in Middle Minoan layers, c. 1600 BC, which produces the 'beard' along with the barley. (pages 126-128) http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=214292#ixzz2xxEis47a 4) As the dominant cult for Athens, the Eleusinian Mysteries and ergot begin to became central to critical aspects of 2000+ years of Western culture. Perhaps echoing Neolithic practices, Mysteries provide a vision. The highest promise for the mystai (Greek, "initiates") was the comprehension and evocation of the natural life-death-rebirth cycle. Birth, Rebirth and Immortality are the perennial themes of ancient Mystery religions -- in metaphor "descent" (loss), "search" and "ascent". Rites and practices of Mystery religions take us deeper and deeper into the labyrinth or the underworld where we examine a series of unanswerable and awesome questions and, are, accordingly, altered by this willingness to enter and be worked upon by the elemental forces that live in the domain of the unknown and unknowable. This is not descending into chaos, though it feels chaotic when we are there. It is entering into domains that cannot be understood in the ways we generally seek and convey understanding. It is entering into worlds that operate by different laws altogether. Integrity is required and so we must be reconstituted; this is the way of transformation. 5) One of the subjects investigated at Eleusis, the seasonally shared public mythic cult practices of a "natural religion", was the relationship between dosage of a "poison" and one's fate. What may be medicinal at small doses can become psychotropic and then lethal at higher doses - as shaped by one's personal relationship to the Gods. 6) Following the end of ceremonies at Eleusis after Goths destroyed the sanctuary around 400, these ergot-based initiatory practices were preserved in the Greek community in Constantinople and elsewhere. Both the Cathars and the Brothers trace their origins to Constantinople and (therefore) to Eleusis. Alaric ravaged Attica but spared Athens, which capitulated at once to the conqueror. In 396, he wiped out the last remnants of the Mysteries at Eleusis in Attica, ending a tradition of esoteric religious ceremonies that had lasted since the Bronze Age. Or did it just go further underground? Broadly speaking, the anti-Church in the West has consistently traced its routes back to the Eleusinian Mysteries (i.e. what became the Orthodox Church in the 2nd and 3rd Romes, as in Russia etc) -- which is why the "pre-history" of LSD is particularly important. This is also why the "KGB" role in the 60s -- as the source of both "blue-acid" LSD (that sparked the British "invasion") and the ergotamine precursor for the "underground" labs, out of Spofa in Prague -- remains the biggest *untold* story of our lifetimes. Magic chemistry has and continues to play an unsung part in history.In its pure form, LSD (d-lysergic acid diethyl amide) is an odorless, colorless, and either tart-tasting (if in the tartrate form) or tasteless crystal substance. The major pharmaceutical company manufacturing pure LSD, for research purposes, is the Spofa United Pharmaceutical Works in Prague, Czechoslovakia, although it has been manufactured by many others. Besides Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in Switzerland, there was the Eli Lilly & Company with the patent for the Garbrecht process (the most efficient process for the manufacture of LSD), and Farmitillia of Milan, Italy, which perfected the deep-vat cultivation of ergot, a mold that grows on rye, among other places, and serves as a source for lysergic acid monohydrate, the main precursor of LSD. In addition, a number of U.S. pharmaceutical firms make small amount of LSD for testing purposes. (Eisner, https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_writings1.shtml) LSD: Eleusis --> Constantinople --> St. Petersburg/Languedoc (Cathars & Brothers) --> Prague/Munich --> San Francisco/London . . . http://www.chymicalphilosophers.org/celestial-botany/ http://www.danmerkur.com/onlinewritings/Grail.PDF Hidden Manna and the Holy Grail: The Psychedelic Sacrament in Arthurian Romance by Dan Merkur http://www.danmerkur.com/onlinewritings/HidManna.PDF 7) Early crusaders carried a version of these ergot-based practices back to southern France along with the relics of St. Anthony the Hermit (desert father of monasticism) in the 11th century. Centered near Arles, on the east side of the Rhone, the hospice escaped the Albigensian Crusade. 8) Based around this knowledge and these artifacts, a Roman Catholic monastic order known as the Hospital Order of St. Anthony (aka Antonians or Antonites) was established under the rule of Augustine in 1247 and spread its influence from London to Jerusalem and beyond. According to Sandoz' corporate history, the Antonites eventually had two hospitals in Basel. St. Anthony [of Padua] lived and preached during the time of the Italian Cathars. He was known as the "hammer of heretics." The Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony, Order of St. Anthony or Canons Regular of St. Anthony of Vienne (Canonici Regulares Sancti Antonii, or CRSAnt), also Antonines, were a Roman Catholic congregation founded in 1095 or so, with the purpose of caring for those suffering from the common medieval disease of St. Anthony's fire. As a hermit and founder of monasticism, Anthony is identified with the "book of nature" and not writing. St. Anthony was the focus of a Roman Catholic Hospital Order which flourished from the 13th to 18th centuries and was responsible for treating the effects of ergot poisoning or St. Anthony's Fire. 9) This Order was assigned the public role of countering the effects of ergot poisoning, otherwise known as St. Anthony's Fire, through operating what may have been the first worldwide pharmacy as well as the specialized use of amputation. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the order was responsible for caring for the sick of the papal household. Saint Anthony's Fire It seems not only possible, but plausible, that monks used to treating outbreaks of St. Anthony's Fire might also learn something of the salvific effect of small amounts of ergot, perhaps purified by some method. They were in a perfect position to notice the effects of dosge and other variables on the population, at large. Also known as 'sacred fire' and 'invisible fire,' ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, traditionally due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus which infects rye and other cereals, and more recently by the action of a number of ergoline-based drugs. It is also known as ergotoxicosis, ergot poisoning and Saint Anthony's Fire. Ergot poisoning is one proposed explanation of bewitchment. Convulsive symptoms include painful seizures and spasms, diarrhea, paresthesias, itching, mental effects including mania or psychosis, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Usually the gastrointestinal effects precede central nervous system effects. 10) Privately this Order continued to practice initiations, with the acceptance and participation of Church authorities, based partly on the use of ergot-derived preparations. In addition, there were various related "military" orders related to the Antonites, including the Knights of Saint Anthony. 11) There is widespread artistic evidence of these religious practices, particularly in the work of Antonite-related painters Hieronymus Bosch (see his c.1500 "Temptation of St. Anthony" triptych in Lisbon) and Mathis Neithardt (aka "Grunewald," see the c.1515 Isenheim Altar polyptich, now in Colmar.) W.A. Stoll later mentions the Isenheim Altar in his 1947 account of the effects of LSD. 12) In the 18th century, the Roman church became increasingly threatened by "secret" initiatory societies -- as shown by the 1738 order excommunicating Catholics who belonged to Masonic Lodges -- culminating in the anti-clerical role of the "Illuminati" in the French Revolution. 13) In 1777, after having been nearly wiped out during the Reformation, a failed reform of the order in 1630 and confiscation of its properties in the French Revolution, the Antonites were canonically merged into the Knights of Malta, which in turn was broken up (and partially re-Romanized) after Napolean captured Malta in 1798. 14) There is evidence that these Mysteries-derived and at times ergot-based initiatory practices did not disappear with the Antonites and found their way into 19th century Theosophical and Rosicrucian groups as well as those involved in "Greek" oriented classical studies. 15) In 1847 at Columbia College in New York, the "Greek" fraternity St. Anthony Hall (aka Delta Psi) was formed to continue this "secret tradition" and Col. Henry Steele Olcott -- who was later join with Madame Blavatsky to form Theosophy -- was one of four 1849 pledges at Columbia. 16) In 1866 at the University of Leipzig, Frederich Nietzsche and Erwin Rohde became ergot-based initiates of a "neo-Eleusinian" group that was devoted to understanding early Greek culture by actually living as the Greeks did. 17) In 1872 in Basel, Nietzsche published his first work, "Birth of Tragedy," based on his close association with his mentor and prominent Basel citizen Johann Jacob Bachofen -- in which he counterpoises Dionysis (i.e. Eleusis) with Apollo. 18) Nietzsche, who was removed from the streets of Turin in 1889 and presumed to have "gone mad," was known to have been a wide-ranging drug taker, in part for his infirmities. Among the compounds citied is a preparation that is presumed to have included cannabis and opium as well as an ergot-derivative, ostensibly meant for migraines. 19) In 1896 in Wiemar, German Theosophist Rudolf Steiner was invited to become Nietzsche's archivist by his sister, giving him access to Nietzsche's private papers. Steiner had previously studied the esoteric aspects of Goethe's work and had begun publishing his own theosophical writings in 1894. 20) In 1897 in Munich, Ludwig Klages (another Leipzig graduate), Stefan George, Otto Gross and others started a group known as the "Cosmic Circle." Explicitly based on recreating "Eleusinian" cult activity and implicitly on using drugs to achieve "ecstatic" states, the circle also popularized the works of Bachofen and Nietzsche. 21) In 1918 in Basel, Sandoz scientist Arthur Stoll isolates the ergot alkaloid Ergotamine, which is later offered as Gynergen, intended to be used in birthing to stop post-pardum hemorrhaging as well as for severe migraine headaches.Looking for a new field of research, I asked Professor Stoll to let me continue the investigations on the alkaloids of ergot, which he had begun in 1917 and which had led directly to the isolation of ergotamine in 1918. Ergotamine, discovered by Stoll, was the first ergot alkaloid obtained in pure chemical form. Although ergotamine quickly took a significant place in therapeutics (under the trade name Gynergen) as a hemostatic remedy in obstetrics and as a medicament in the treatment of migraine, chemical research on ergot in the Sandoz laboratories was abandoned after the isolation of ergotamine and the determination of its empirical formula. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the thirties, English and American laboratories had begun to determine the chemical structure of ergot alkaloids. They had also discovered a new, watersoluble ergot alkaloid, which could likewise be isolated from the mother liquor of ergotamine production. So I thought it was high time that Sandoz resumed chemical research on ergot alkaloids, unless we wanted to risk losing our leading role in a field of medicinal research, which was already becoming so important. Professor Stoll granted my request, with some misgivings: "I must warn you of the difficulties you face in working with ergot alkaloids. These are-exceedingly sensitive, easily decomposed substances, less stable than any of the compounds you have investigated in the cardiac glycoside field. But you are welcome to try." (Hofmann, Problem Child, Ch 1) 22) In 1922 in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner's original wooden Goetheanum "cathedral" is burned to the ground, presumed to be on orders from Steiner's rival "magician, " Adolf Hitler. Steiner's Anthroposophy continues to have its headquarters outside Basel to this day, following Steiner's death in 1925. 23) An interview was published in 1977 in a book titled "Beyond the Mechanical Mind: An investigation by Peter Fry and Macolm Long based on the ABC radio series '. . . And Something Else is Happening Here.'" where on page 101-102 Harman is quoted as saying, "The story really starts way back in 1935 with a group of followers of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner who lived in a village in Southern Germany. In 1935 a dark cloud was over Europe so the members of this group set out very deliberately to synthesize chemicals which were like the natural vegetable substances which they were well aware had been used in all the world's major religious traditions down through the centuries. By 1938 they had synthesized psilocybin, LSD and about thirty other drugs. Then they stopped to think about the consequences of letting all of this loose, and decided against it. They decided that they were not sure what the negative effects of the drugs would be and that it just wasn't a very wise thing to do." 24) In 1927 in Basel, Sandoz hired 21 year-old Albert Hofmann to work as an organic chemist. Hofmann, who was born in 1906 in Baden and studied in Zurich, later describes a series of natural "mystical" experiences he had as a youth, perhaps similar to those described by Capt. Al Hubbard in his youth. Excerpt from an interview with Huston Smith about Timothy Leary and the Psychedelic Movement, from Outside Looking In.RF: Did you have any idea of what was to come when you first became acquainted with sacred drugs?HS: Before answering your question I want to take exception to your calling them "sacred drugs." They have sacred possibilities, I am not going to back down on that. But Aldous Huxley was wise in calling them "heaven and hell drugs," and hell connotes what is demonic rather than sacred. Here we are back with my point about their ambiguous nature.Now to your question: Not at the start. As you noted during the first year the mood was wildly optimistic, for all signals seemed to read green. You've touched on the important ones. Psychologically, the psychedelics promised easier access to repressed unconscious materials, shortcutting years of psychoanalysis. In behavior change they held the promise of reducing the recidivism of paroled prisoners. And in my prime interest, they seemed to hold the promise of rolling back the materialistic world view that imprisons us by showing people—causing them to see directly—that Nietzche was wrong in announcing that God was dead.RF: Was it apparent right from the start that these were religious sacraments when they arrived at Harvard in 1960?HS: To me it was, though set and setting quickly entered the picture. This again makes me restive when you refer to them categorically as "religious sacraments" for that seems to position them in a linear, one-to-one relationship with religion.... Conclusions LSD is the *least* well understood "technology" of the 20th century -- since, like the atom bomb it was deliberately introduced to fundamentally change society but was then wrapped in a "cover-story" to disguise what was going on. The "official" story is that it was ALL an accident. Discovered by accident. Spread by accident. In fact, it was (mostly) quite deliberate. The origins are very old and began with the Eleusinian Mysteries in Athens -- in which every person (including women and slaves) was expected to participate at least once in their lives. This is the only known example of an entire population being put through a "psychedelic" initiation (which are widespread in "primitive" societies but generally only for the shaman/priests), as (partially) documented here -- http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Eleusis-Unveiling-Mysteries/dp/1556437528/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396539774&sr=8-1&keywords=road+to+eleusis Later, the Mysteries were picked up as one of themes of speculative Freemasonry and Eleusis became a constant refrain for masons and their more "esoteric" versions, particularly the "Rosicrucians" (concentrated in Germany), as documented here -- https://www.academia.edu/3787848/Masonry_and_the_Mysteries_of_Eleusis_Revisited_Threshing_Floors_and_WaterfallsBy the late 19th-century, the Rosicrucians had morphed into
the Theosophical Society and their German section was headed by Rudolf Steiner,
who later split and called his group Anthroposophy. The Anthroposophical
Society international center is at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. Today they run the Waldorf Schools and are
headquartered in Dornach, just outside Basel,
where they still conduct "plays" based on the Mysteries.http://www.anthroposophy.org/calendar/event-details/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=1269&cHash=ab6856044a8ebfcfbc826cda61bae56e Many of the chemists at Sandoz in the 1920s were a part of this group -- where LSD was deliberately synthesized as a "safe" alternative to the potentially poisonous preparation of the *ergot* fungus as the source for the ritual, which had been going on for 3000-or-so years (in various venues, including as a "secret" Catholic sacrament in the Middle Ages.)

The notion of using a synthetic version of ergot for a general "religious" revival was even the topic of a novel published in Germany in 1933 (5 years before the supposed first synthesis and 10 years before the "accidental" discovery of its potency),

First published and banned by the Nazis in 1933, this work follows Dr. George Amberg as he emerges from an unexplained coma and discovers a plot by the government to manipulate the population by means of a drug.http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Peters-Snow-Leo-Perutz/dp/1559700831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396541094&sr=8-1&keywords=st+peters+snow+perutz

The "release" of all this into the general population in the 1960s was *not* the plan of the Sandoz chemists, who were interested in just giving it to an "elite" of world-leaders (like JFK, etc.) but was instead the handiwork of the KGB -- who spread it around in NYC, San Francisco, London, and Paris, etc. in the mid-60s as a part of their Cold War "disruption" of the West.

That part of the story is now being researched for publication by a few authors (with my help).

Recordings of the 1976 radio interview are available in the National Library of Australia, under the title "Culture and Counterculture". Presumably anyone with access to the National Library of Australia can find it here -- http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/17557015?selectedversion=NBD6834818

Excerpts of the interview were published in 1977 in a book titled "Beyond the Mechanical Mind: An investigation by Peter Fry and Malcolm Long based on the ABC radio series '. . . And Something Else is Happening Here.'"

On page 101-102 Harman is quoted as saying, "The story really starts way back in 1935 with a group of followers of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner who lived in a village in Southern Germany. In 1935 a dark cloud was over Europe so the members of this group set out very deliberately to synthesize chemicals which were like the natural vegetable substances which they were well aware had been used in all the world's major religious traditions down through the centuries. By 1938 they had synthesized psilocybin, LSD and about thirty other drugs. Then they stopped to think about the consequences of letting all of this loose, and decided against it. They decided that they were not sure what the negative effects of the drugs would be and that it just wasn't a very wise thing to do. Five years later, in 1943, when Europe was really in bad shape, they decided apparently that the possible negative consequences were nothing compared to the consequences of not doing this. Now, two members of this group, which lived in a very tight religious community, were in the Sandoz chemical company -- that's partly how this project came to be. One of them was the chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann. He cooked up the newspaper story, that everyone has heard by now, about the accidental ingestion of the LSD and the realization of what its properties were after an amazing bicycle ride home and the visions and so on . . . " Some have expressed wonder that Harman would skew the story beyond Hofmann's own words and why he might break such a story in a relatively obscure place. But he likely believed it as most agree it originated with Al Hubbard.

“Wonder Bread” & the Cup of Wonder

I spent the better part of a day with Willis at IoNS (arranged by Tom Furman, following a breakfast with him in Palo Alto, precipitated by some comments I had been posting about SRI online) in which he not only confirmed the details but added a good deal about the role of the Catholic Church's use of ergot as a "secret sacrament" and of the CIA as the "flaming shield that protects the gnostic truth."

In my experience, you only get answers if you ask the questions. I asked Tim Leary the questions. I asked Owsley the questions. I asked Willis Harman the questions. I asked many people the questions. Unless you asked those questions -- of multiple participants, working it like an "investigation" -- then you can't claim to know what happened.

Martin Lee reports the following in his 1987 (?) "The CIA, LSD and the Occult" interview in High Frontiers #4: https://archive.org/stream/highfrontiers04high/highfrontiers04high_djvu.txt

"What if Hofmann really knew all along what it was, or somebody else did? Again, I'll put this into context. I don't believe that he is lying. But it is curious . . . There is another story which I did not put in my book. According to Captain Al Hubbard, Hofmann did not discover it in 1943, nor in '38, but much earlier."

This interview was archived online by Ken Goffman. Would it be a good idea to flesh this out and publish the "true" history to help reset mistaken impressions? Yes, I believe it would and I'm available, based on my interviews, to help those who are writing about psychedelics get the story "straight" -- in which not only the CIA and the Church figure prominently, but also the KGB!

Sandoz was CIA and Spofa was KGB. You really can't tell the "players" without a scorecard.

MK-ULTRA was an "umbrella" for funding psychedelics (in the West) in the 1950s/60s -- which came to an end (circa 1967), at which point the FILES were *destroyed* -- what came out in the 1970s (as a result of FOIA requests by the NY Times and *me*) were specifically constructed to paint a "classic" COVER-STORY and, indeed, anyone who believes that was the "real" MK-ULTRA is a candidate for being called a "naif".

My approach has always been as follows:

1) try to understand your *own* actions by removing yourself from the "good vs. bad" of the situation

2) talk to as many people as you can who were involved

3) specifically look for people who will tell you *different* stories

4) conduct the interviews in *private* and promise not to reveal your sources

5) put all of it into the best overall context that you can figure out -- "believing" anyone who has a their own identity wrapped up in the story they tell you (as is the case with nearly 100% of what is said in public about psychedelics, where people routinely paint themselves as "heroes") is bound to take you in the WRONG direction . . . !!

My approach is to promise those I talk with to *not* reveal them as a source. After much experience with this, I've found that's the only way to get an "honest" answer. So, my work has no "scholarly" use -- which is just fine with me!

I spent 6 hours going over all this with Willis Harman (in his INS office). It was in late March 1995, set up by Tom Mandel at a breakfast I had with him at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto (just a few weeks before he died) -- how's that for "scholarly" precision? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mandel_(futurist)

I have talked with many others who also got versions of the same story from him or from Capt. Al Hubbard (who was the ultimate source for most of this). Martin Lee on “Acceler8tor” describes what Hubbard told him *but* how he

1) didn't ask Hofmann about any of it and,

2) didn't even put it in "Acid Dreams" as a footnote? That's how the "truth" has been buried for all these years -- not because it wasn't "out there."

I spent another 6 hours with Tim Leary in his home going over his *long* association with the CIA (starting in graduate school.) If Fadiman ASKED the same questions of Harman (or if YOU asked the same questions of Leary or Barron or Harman) and got *different* answers, then we should compare notes.

If you *didn't* ask these questions, then you will just have to take my word for what they told me -- and then figure out how it fits into what you know otherwise (but only after you remove all the "good-vs-bad" bias that will inevitably cloud your judgment).

Infinity Initiations

Yes. Ergot was used more-or-less continuously from antiquity (1000- BC) until the invention of LSD.

Yes. The medieval Church had a secret psychedelic sacrament, described by Dan Merkur."In that the “small piece of bread” was kept in a reliquary, it was implicitly a relic, thegrail. The grail king consumed a third of the bread--possibly its material reality, as distinct from its imaginable form and intelligible idea. The exhibition and consumption of the grail was analogous to a Eucharist, but it did not involve a consecrated wafer. Neither was the grail procession an ecclesiastic rite. Gawain called the Grail a “miracle,” as did his host in the course of his reply. “Meanwhile the old lord was speaking. ‘Gawain,’ he said, ‘this miracle of God must not become common knowledge: it must be kept secret....you see the Grail....’”

In its explicit statement that the miraculous nature of the bread was a secret, TheCrown implied that the bread manifested miraculous properties upon being consumed. The motif was perhaps the least secretive discussion in Arthurian romance of the hidden manna, the psychedelic sacrament of the medieval Church."

Yes. In Nietzsche's times it was a part of some "student society" initiations, with Jacob Bachofen as a "master" in the network, which is why Fritz took over his "Dionysian" (e.g. Eleusinian) lectures at University of Basel.http://tribes.tribe.net/ethnobotany/thread/5a0356c2-b179-45b4-a6a1-a5ea44e0f36f

Yes. Sandoz was deeply intertwined with the CIA -- including the synthesis of psilocybin and the investigation at Pont St Esprit. Sandoz has now morphed into Syngenta, second only to Monsanto in developing GMOs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta

Yes. The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) is a teaching and research facility in psychiatry, neurology and related fields. Several generations have had odd relationships with UCLA. Sidney Cohen said once hardly anything went on at NPI that the CIA wasn't involved in. Of course Louis J. West, MD was one of their head researchers with his Air Force background in brainwashing. From 1954-1962 Los Angeles psychiatrist Oscar Janiger gave LSD-25 to more than 950 men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 81 and coming from all walks of life. He is best known for "turning on" Hollywood celebrities and well-known literary figures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Jolyon_West

Yes. the KGB was in charge of the "psychotomemetic" experiments in Prague, which were transferred there after the 1956 uprising in Budapest. This is the topic behind Soderbergh's 1991 movie "Kafka," a mystery thriller that blurs the lines between fact and Kafka’s fiction. http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/steven-soderbergh-says-his-new-cut-of-kafka-will-be-a-hardcore-art-movie-20130529

Yes. Owsley confirmed the KGB source to me in an interview. Leary confirmed his close association with the CIA in my interview with him. The attitude was generally, "Yes, we know about where all this comes from but we are taking advantage of them, not them of us" -- as voiced by the Harvard group who gathered for Leary's death regarding the MKULTRA origin of their psilocybin. Hollingshead, Stark and Trochhi were international "men of mystery" with drug careers that bridged between the various "agencies." I never met/interviewed any of them but others who knew them.

Much of what I know about this originally came from interviews I conducted with ex-CIA (and, later, ex-KGB) participants in the 1970s/80s. What now has to be done is to tell their story -- which, by agreement, cannot be "documented" -- with the otherwise available "evidence" to provide an overview of the bigger picture.

"We can easily see how LSD inverts the relationships of ill humor, stupidity, and thought: it no sooner eliminates the supremacy of categories than it tears away the ground of its indifference and disintegrates the gloomy dumbshow of stupidity; and it presents this univocal and acategorical mass not only as variegated, mobile, asymmetrical, decentered, spiraloid, and reverberating but causes it to rise, at each instant, as a swarming of phantasm-events. As it slides on this surface at once regular and intensely vibratory, as it is freed from its catatonic chrysalis, thought invariably contemplates this indefinite equivalence transformed into an acute event and a sumptuous, appar­eled repetition….Drugs-if we can speak of them generally-have nothing at all to do with truth and falsity; only to fortune-tellers do they reveal a world "more truthful than the real." In fact, they displace the relative positions of stupidity and thought by eliminating the old necessity of a theater of immobility. But perhaps, if it is given to thought to confront stupidity, drugs, which mobilize it, which color, agitate, furrow, and dissipate it, which populate it with differences and substitute for the rare flash a continuous phosphorescence, are the source of a partial thought-perhaps."

The note that follows this extract is from Deleuze: "what will people think of us?"

One reason I wanted to get Manuel's attention was to see what he knows about when LSD "hit" in France and when Foucault & Deleuze first participated. Foucault had a famous "epiphany" while tripping in Death Valley in 1975 but I suspect they were both involved much earlier. Foucault's "Theatrum Philosophicum" (1970), suggests psychedelic consumption along with phantasm and philosophy. http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpfoucault5.htm

My sources often stressed how parts of *both* the CIA and KGB were a) populated with "esotericists" and b) trying to work together for "World Peace." LSD was a parallel plan to the development of atomic weapons...and both genies escaped their bottles and changed our world. Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, www.pugwash.org

From about 1948 to 1953, former Nazi scientists and CIA interrogators began to use LSD as an advanced interrogation technique, according to the new book "Operation Paperclip" by journalist Annie Jacobsen. The CIA saw LSD as a potential “truth serum," according to FOIA documents obtained by Jacobsen, but it turned out to be an active metaphor for Cold War paranoia.

The work took place inside a clandestine facility in the American zone of occupied Germany, called Camp King. The facility’s chief medical doctor was Operation Paperclip’s Dr. Walter Schreiber, the former Surgeon General of the Third Reich. When Dr. Schreiber was secretly brought to America—to work for the U.S. Air Force in Texas—his position was filled with another Paperclip asset, Dr. Kurt Blome, the former Deputy Surgeon General of the Third Reich and the man in charge of the Nazi’s program to weaponize bubonic plague.

LSD was tested twice on suspected Soviet spies captured by the Nazis as well as by army officer-turned-CIA scientist Frank Olson.

manner of food, a motif that had earlier been prominent in Celtic tales of the terrestrial paradise,

but had pertained to manna in the writings of St Basil of Caesarea and St Augustine of

Hippo. The grail was also connected with imagery appropriate to the Eucharist in Chrétien,

Robert de Boron, the Parzival, the Perlesvaus, the Queste, the prose Lancelot, the Estoire, and

the Post-Vulgate Queste. At the same time, the manna that was the Eucharist was not

intended. The grail was regularly associated with visions, whether simply of a bright light or,

in other accounts, complex images that sometimes developed as coherent narratives. Explicit

portraits of visions were lacking only in some of the continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval,

together with the German contributions, Wolfram’s Parzival and Heinrich’s Crown. The

juxtaposition of these three elements--miraculous food, associations with the Eucharist, and

the occurrence of visions--attest unmistakably to the medieval concept of hidden manna.”

STAHLMAN ON MEDIA EFFECTSUnder
RADIO conditions, the *theme* was SCIENTIFIC social movements -- given
the "right" schema, the humans could build a "perfect" society.
Fascism/National Socialism and Communism/Marxism-Leninism were only a
few of these grandiose schemes. There was also Distributism and Technocracy and on-and-on-and-on.

Under
TELEVISION conditions, the *theme* was the HUMANS have F*CKED UP! None
of the *radio* driven schemas worked, so we got the "Ghost in the
Machine" and the "God that Failed." We got LSD and a wide-range of
*death* rituals -- typically aimed at the EGO.

In
the summer of 1967, Gregory Bateson could even give a speech titled
"Conscious Purpose vs. Nature" at the Tavistock "Dialectics of
Liberation" conference -- in which he proposed that the humans were
destroying the world simply because they are "conscious" -- yes, the
KGB-fueled "Summer of Love" in SFCal and the birth of LSD-inspired Sgt.
Pepper in "Swinging London."

We
went from the *humans* have a great plan (HOT media/Radio/Scientific
Socialism) to the *humans* should get the hell off the planet (COOL
media/Television/Conspiracy) -- two very different environments, two
very different attitudes about humanity . . . !!

We
went from "take me to your leader" (*radio* environment) to "question
authority" (*television* environment.) From "joining the Party" to
"they're out to get us." From marching down the streets to the John
Birch Society. From "optimistic" modernism to "pessimistic"
post-modernism.. New environment; new attitudes.

Trying
to generalize about the "behavioral standpoint" or "basic sociological
fact" FAILS when you simply consider the history of the 20th century.
The *same* people (or their children) felt something very different in
1930 and in 1960.

Why?
There is no social science "theory" that can explain what happened
(since they are looking for continuities when they should be looking for
dis-continuities) other than something EXTERNAL to the humans changed
and the humans "adapted" to that change . . . !!

New Media mavin, MARK STAHLMAN is a venture capitalist focused on next generation computer/networking platforms and business cycle/technical analysis for over 25 years. He co-founded the Newmedia Laboratory, NYNMA, the Non-Linear Circle and Technorealism. He was also the investment banker at Alex Brown & Sons who brought America Online and Creative Labs public, and the first Wall Street analyst to recommend Sun Microsystems. His educational background includes a B.S. in genetics at UW Madison, with Graduate work in theology and molecular biology. In his professional life on Wall Street, he was a "technology strategist." He began as a software entrepreneur in the early 70s and first met Bill Gates in 1977. His overall concern is the impact of "technological environments" on the people who live *inside* of them. He now studies the social impact of the computers & networks that came after LSD, noting “Tim Leary was correct that "PC's are the LSD of the '90s". Twenty years later, we still don't understand what these technologies are doing to us.” With a keen eye for pattern recognition, he has developed a novel theory based on off-the-record interviews as well as primary and secondary sources. He recently decided to make it public so others might pursue viable connections. Currently, there is a major shift in psychedelic science. It is probably important for us to try to understand what happened in the past century with a little detachment and some careful analysis.We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.--T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding When was LSD "discovered"?

If this means ‘first synthesized’, then the answer is 1938 -- according to the published record.

If this means ‘first ingested and experienced’, then the answer is 1943 -- also according to the published record.

However, if this means ‘first used for detailed experiments on human subjects -- in order to discover what LSD really does’ -- then the answer is somewhat later. 1947? 1949?

Therefore, it is historically impossible to separate the discovery of the impact of LSD on humanity -- as established in the 1950's and 1960's -- from the involvement of the CIA and the KGB, or their predecessors. More broadly speaking, the history of LSD is intimately intertwined with the Cold War and cannot really be understood outside of this context. Because LSD is so thoroughly mixed up with "spy" organizations, we should all have some skepticism about the published reports. As any historian who has worked on the history of the CIA, KGB, or MI6 knows, there is a rich supply of "cover-stories" that have to be worked through and dug around. The preferred technique is to conduct lots of interviews with lots of participants and then cross-correlate all their stories. Generally these interviews are confidential and they often take considerable time to research and set up, since those involved are concerned about secrecy and often have their own axes to grind and/or blindspots. LSD had massive impact on the culture -- as, indeed, has television and the Internet -- but *not* towards the goals that Hofmann et al had in mind when they "released" the drug in the 1940s. That's the *failure* that seems to stand in the way of a more honest treatment of the history (both as "history" and as current events). As John Markoff documents in his "What the Dormouse Said," LSD turned into the PC. If that hadn't happened -- with Burning Man becoming the "pilgrimage" for Silicon Valley etc -- then LSD would likely have become a footnote. We were already into an "archaic revival" in the 19th century with Theosophy and high-society seances but the hoped for "Aquarian Conspiracy" has morphed into something else. Now it's *digital* and is driven by the "urge to merge" with the robots (instead of the Godhead) . . . !!Text & Con Text The following is a summary of an extensive collection of notes assembled over nearly 40 years as a result of interviews and experiences with over a hundred people, some living and some dead, regarding the fascinating history of LSD. My first personal encounter with LSD was in late 1967 and, off-and-on, I've been exploring its relation to human endeavors ever since. This summary of the pre-history of LSD was first published in anticipation of the international symposium "LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug", held in Basel, Switzerland. It was compiled with a particular mind towards the conference theme, "The Spirit of Basel." I have not exhaustively cross-checked all the details and make no claims about the accuracy or completeness of what follows. In addition to a great deal of published material in many fields, these notes are largely the compiled accounts of many discussions with scholars, witnesses, psychonauts, literati, initiates, spies and acolytes. Given the nature of each individual recollection, they may very well contain inconsistencies and contradictions. Many participants requested anonymity. While I have dispensed with the customary "probably" and "very likely," it would be advisable to consider these notes as mere starting points for further, more rigorous, investigations. You can't tell the players without a scorecard. Naturally, stakeholders have every reason to tell partially true stories, wholly true, complete fabrications, or confabulations that are potentially instructive for those willing to dig a little deeper. They have different agendas and worldviews. No one has much of a clue about what really happened without actually talking to the players and asking them pointed questions about what game they have been playing. For example, I know one of the supposed members of the "Aviary" and have discussed what really happened on the "weird desk" at the CIA and its relationship to the "X-Files", etc. The Conspiracy/Hollywood version of these events is, well, designed to attract a crowd (so that you can "pick their pockets") and has little relation to reality. These days conspiratorial spin is in vogue for narrating the history of the psychedelic movement; perhaps it offsets the earlier idealism. But, I am much more interested in "telling the story" as it has come to me than I am in "convincing anyone". However, to be sure, all the best available information does need to be brought into that story. So far, it has not. Indeed, it has been deliberately excluded. I do not intend to write a book based on this research and I'm happy to assist others with their projects. In addition, I'm limited by only having English at my disposal so I'm always grateful for help with references that are only available in other languages. Lastly, since ergot grows worldwide, it seems only reasonable that ergot preparations also have a long history outside the "Western" tradition. The unique association between ergot and Athens as well as the urge to connect initiatory rites with presumed-to-be ancient practices weaves ergot preparations into the history of esoteric initiations throughout millennia in the West. Perhaps there is a similar pre-history to LSD in the East? When I met Tim, my first question, as I was rolling him a splif was "So tell me about the CIA." When the crew gathered at his death-bed, a friend of mine was there and, at my prompting, asked the question. Yes, they said, they all knew that their work at Harvard was a *part of* MKULTRA (not something that was "coincidentally in parallel" as Martino puts it) but "We were taking advantage of them, not them of us" Right. http://books.google.com/books?id=NdeWA9X8hMMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Aquarius Revisited: Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture That ... By Peter O. WhitmerDennis Martino, whom Leary had met a few years earlier in Laguna Beach through the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. (Martino's twin brother, David, was married to Leary's daughter, Susan.) Martino had participated in numerous drug smuggling operations for the Brotherhood until he was busted for selling marijuana. After serving six months in prison, he jumped probation and fled to Europe. –Acid Dreamshttp://www.american-buddha.com/aciddreams.10bitter.htm Martino's Leary quote (referring to Frank Barron) is illustrative (of his own gullibility), "Frank would get to drinking, we'd both get to drinking at night, and Frank would get to talking about the CIA research and how they were infiltrating places like Berkeley and Harvard. It was just Frank raving . . . we were so innocent, it never occurred to us." If so, where did the psilocybin come from and who was paying the research grant? Psychedelics and the Rosicrucians: With all of the speculative literature about how the religions of the world "began" with psychedelics -- Wasson, Ruck, Allegro, Merkur, Ott, Irvin, Heinrich et al -- why isn't there a comparable literature on the drugs used by the much-more modern Rosicrucians etc? Why muck around in pre-history when you could look much closer to home at the 17th century in Germany and England? What is being "hidden" and why? I'm reading Tobias Churton's 2009 "The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians" and it is filled with references to the "golden medicine" and how alchemists were also "pharmacologists." In addition to all the plans to "reform the whole world," these people were deeply committed to "personal alchemy." But not a word about any drugs. Does it make any sense that this didn't also involve psychedelics? What does the "Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz" sound like to you? <g> I have also been looking at (Prince?) Stanislov "Stash" Klossowski De Rola's 1973 "The Secret Art of Alchemy." Stash was a perpetual companion to the Beatles and the Stones (busted w/ Brian Jones) as well in the early LA music scene etc. Student of "spiritual alchemy" and a heavy consumer (and supplier?) of psychedelics -- coincidence? What is Dan Merkur -- who I asked about this and quickly brushed me aside -- not telling us? Why is Christopher McIntosh (a colleague at Exeter w/ Churton), with whom I discussed all this not researching the link between Eleusis and "esotericism"? Have they agree that their newly-respectable academic field couldn't deal with the "scandal"? If they are keeping all this a "secret," should we believe anything else that they say? This is the wrong question, because it falls victim to the prohibition era censorship and confusion over the issue of drugs and religion. Per the maximal entheogen framework,*given* that Rosicrucianism is centrally grounded in psychedelic experiences and the metaphysical insights that these experiences reveal, the real question becomes - does Churton himself consciously know about the psychedelic significance of concepts such as 'golden medicine' and 'world reformation'? i.e., is he deliberately censoring the forbidden (psychedelic) truth, or does he not know about it? The filtering effect that drug prohibition creates in published literature (it is practically de facto forbidden to publish certain ideas) must be taken into account when reading *any* modern interpretation of an ancient religious/philosophical system like Rosicrucianism. God plays hide and seek with himself, drug prohibition is the veil he hides behind. With the corpse of John Allegro's reputation swinging in the background, scholars like Churton cannot openly say whatever they want to say. Merkur had to pay the academic tax of years of 'straight' books as a professional academic (see for example his old book 'Gnosis') before he could get away with publishing his more recent psychedelic books like 'Manna'. Similarly, Grof had to artificially distort the efficacy of LSD at triggering the mystic altered state by plugging his phony technique of 'holotropic breathwork' (aka hyperventilating), right from when the psychedelic sacrament was made illegal in 1967, it became immediately professionally and practically impossible to continue using LSD openly, so Grof saved his career by over-hyping the efficacy of his substitute technique. Only recently since he retired has he admitted that breathing techniques do not typically trigger an intense psychedelic experience as LSD does. When telling the truth about drugs conflicts with a career, reputation and success etc, people will choose the latter. Another example of this is the drug-police who join the group LEAP only *after* they retire, after a career of brutality against drug users. The Muttercorn Though some argue otherwise, many consider LSD a "sacred" chemical. That means that its usage is ultimately a *religious* matter that is deeply associated with "ancient wisdom." This knowledge should lead us to ask the simple question, "Who in the 20th century might have wanted to start an "archaic revival' using LSD and why would they want to do that?" I have to guess that no one ever asked Hofmann if he (or perhaps his boss Stoll) was *looking* for such an effect. No one argues that the 25th lysergic acid analog was a "surprise," since this was a "trial-and-error" process, like Edison finding the right material for the light-bulb filament, so that's not particularly interesting. It seems highly unlikely that NO ONE at Sandoz knew of the "religious" properties of ergot (or of Perutz's novel). So the only way we are likely to know what Hofmann knew (and when he knew it) is if someone asked him those questions. What is amazing about the "official" story is that it seems to be based on a complete lack of "curiosity" about what really happened. On that basis alone, it has to be categorized as "pretty lies" (told by people who didn't want to look too closely at the facts involved). Where is the "contradiction" between what Hofmann said and what Harman/Hoffman said? Did anyone ever get Hofmann on the record regarding his own "religious" ambitions for LSD, the relationship with Anthroposophy and the Nazis or the long historic string that connected Eleusis to modern day practices? My sense is that he answered the questions that were put to him, typically by "acolytes" who were unable to muster any sense of larger context, so that his public statements were "true" but not at all complete. Thom Lyttle once arranged for me to meet with Hofmann but other events overtook those plans and, alas, it never happened. Did anyone ever ask a *penetrating* question of Hofmann for the public record? This inquiry immediately raises issues with the "cover-stories" that

it was an "accident" (i.e. the "official" story)

that it was spread by the CIA to undermine the anti-war movement

(i.e. the "Acid Dreams" hypothesis), and

that it was a "mind-control" plot (i.e. the Jan Irvin hypothesis), etc.

So what was it? If you don't ask the questions, then you will not get the answers. Much more plausible, given all that we know, is that the introduction of LSD was an "occult" religious activity -- driven by what Gurdjieff called "the battle of the magicians" in the early 20th century. It was literally a battle for the soul of Western Civilization, which arguably had begun in Athens millennia before. “In the school of the White Magician. A spacious room which Iooks like a laboratory or an observatory with here and there shelves on which stand boltheads, glasses and objects of fantastic shape recalling modern apparatus, also several parchment rolls and books.In front of the window stands a telescope of strange form, and to the left, on a small table is an apparatus similar to a microscope.”“The school of the Black Magician. A large cave. The back wall has a projection in themiddle; to the right is an ascent to the entrance, to the left, a passage leading to an inner cave. At the left-hand side in a dark recess is a kind of hearth or stove in which a fire is blazing. On the stove is a cauldron out of which clouds of greenish smoke escapeoccasionally. Here and there stand low tables with various objects scattered on them, and boltheads, glasses, books and rolls of parchment are lying in disorder about the cave.” (Gurdjieff, “The Struggle of Magicians”) The publication of Leo Perutz's "St. Peter's Snow" novel in 1933, all on its own, puts the "lie" to the "accident" theory. The dystopic novel described a “secret experiment to make a mind-altering drug.” As described in TheRoad to Eleusis, “To begin with, the so-called Saint Peter’s snow, the white mildew which occurs on wheat which gives the novel its name and which is the organic precursor to the synthetic psychoactive drug being developed by Baron von Malchin (much to the puzzlement and curiosity of Georg Amberg, the protagonist doctor of the novel) is a clear reference to ergot (claviceps purpurea (Fr.)), a fungal growth and a parasite on rye as well as barley, wheat and on certain wild grasses. By 1935, when Harman and Hubbard (who worked closely together) believed this began, the *religious* implications of a synthetic derived from ergot was public knowledge. No esoteric rituals or handshakes were needed -- just a chemistry lab.Willis Harman, a senior social scientist at the Stanford Research Institute known as SRI International, and the initiator of the institute’s futures research program (and later the president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences), suggested, in an interview on ABC radio in 1977, that the origins of LSD began with an esoteric or mystical movement specifically following the twentieth century mystic Rudolf Steiner.[28]Willis Harman, quoted in Peter Fry and Malcolm Long (eds.), Beyond the Mechanical Mind (Based on the radio series ‘…And Something Else is Happening’), Sydney: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1977, 101-2.http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/Those who knew Al Hubbard would describe him as just a "barefoot boy from Kentucky," who never got past third grade. But as a young man, the shoeless hillbilly was purportedly visited by a pair of angels, who told him to build something. He had absolutely no training, "but he had these visions, and he learned to trust them early on," says Willis Harman, [former] director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, CA."Al was desperately searching for meaning in his life," says Willis Harman. Seeking enlightenment, Hubbard returned to an area near Spokane, WA, where he'd spent summers during his youth. He hiked into the woods and an angel purportedly appeared to him in a clearing. "She told Al that something tremendously important to the future of mankind would be coming soon, and that he could play a role in it if he wanted to," says Harman. "But he hadn't the faintest clue what he was supposed to be looking for." http://www.fargonebooks.com/high.html Hofmann et al's publication of The Road to Eleusis tells us what was really going on -- an attempt to revive the Eleusinian Mysteries, which by the 19th century had become the go-to initiatory trope for the "Rosicrucians", who ultimately gathered under the banner of Anthroposophy, etc. The Steinerites still stage Eleusinian "Mystery Plays" in Dornach, at their HQ in a suburb of Basel. Yes, Sandoz is also in Basel. Intelligence Arguably, we are all also aware that this "revival" didn't work. Given this "failure" and the "secret" religious motivations behind it, it should be no surprise that those involved aren't very anxious to take credit for what happened. I began my "investigative" research, shortly after I filed an FoIA request for the MKULTRA files (in parallel with John Marks and a few others) and read through the cartons of material -- which raised many more questions than they answered. I started with some CIA contacts that I had developed. They introduced me to some KGB contacts and the "real" story started to emerge -- likely because those I was talking to didn't want to go to their graves with the only version available coming from those (clearly "fake" and stage-managed) "documents." I did a lot of initial research in the wake of the MKULTRA FoIA releases (for which I was also a "petitioner"). Those I talked to in the CIA at the time were adamant that what was released -- remembering that these were supposed to be "overlooked" financial documents, since Helms had ordered the destruction of the files -- were a "fabrication" intended to target some, while deliberately avoiding the larger picture. They told me they wanted to "set the record straight" (at the same time they didn't want to be directly quoted). Then they introduced me to some in the KGB, just to confirm the story -- which they did. What John Marks wrote up was NOT the sum-total of the CIA's involvement with LSD, as he makes very clear (and recently confirmed in our conversation). In fact, many in-and-around the CIA hierarchy also took LSD for "psychiatric" purposes. Gregory Bateson is an obvious example. So were the Luces, etc. Norman Mailer touches on aspects of this in his "Harlot's Ghost" (and I hear there is another "MKULTRA novel" in his unpublished papers). http://www.amazon.com/Harlots.../dp/0345379659/ref=sr_1_1.. Subsequently, I've done dozens of interviews and at no point along the way did anyone with direct knowledge of these events try to convince me that the "official" story was the true one. Consistently, they told me that LSD was part of a "plot" to "save the world," hatched during WW II when it seemed very possible that Hitler could win the war. Alternate history, anyone? The Nazis were, of course, at their evil core, themselves an "occult" organization. The SS projected themselves as the revival of the "Round Table" -- which is why they were so committed to exterminating their rivals, with the Jewish Kabbalists at the top of that list. Herman Hess flew to Scotland to try to cement an "occult alliance" with the remnant of the Templars that he believed were still in charge of the British elites. That's also why they provided a tutor to the Dalai Lama and so on. Psychochemical Warfare The introduction of LSD was, according to those I spoke with, a version of *occult* “chemical warfare” -- following on the heels of the chemicals rained down on the trench-bound combatants in WW I, [and perhaps not unrelated to the intensive shell-shock research which followed in Britain]. We are the ones ultimately recruited to fight that war, so now it falls to us to write its history: Approximately 30-40 Czech doctors carried out thousands of experiments with LSD in the Communist era, over two decades. "One of the doctors, a man named Jiri Rubicek, was interested in the possible effects it could have. But no-one really knew - not even Sandoz knew at the time - what it was really good for. They knew it was really powerful, but they didn't really know how it would be useful. They asked doctors, if you can find some use for this - great."So there were many different projects, there were some where they created so-called model psychosis, to try to understand schizophrenia. There was this belief at the time that schizophrenic patients were undergoing a kind of permanent acid trip. They thought if psychologists, psychiatrists, medical students could experience the same thing then they would understand schizophrenia better." http://www.radio.cz/en/section/talking/could-study-of-czechoslovak-tests-lead-to-return-to-respectability-for-lsd There were a variety of projects, treating alcoholics, neurotics, depressives, artists, and psychotics with LSD. They deliberately concealed any mystical aspects that appeared. An LSD experiment was made on the Czechoslovak army to prepare against the US. This experiment was performed and shot in military hospital in Prague. Stan Grof has some particular insight as a former LSD researcher in Prague in the Soviet era: "Until 1961, this research involved Sandoz-supplied LSD. But Grof saw no reason why Czech scientists shouldn't be producing a native supply. Fatefully situated approximately 200 miles from Prague at this time was the Czech pharmaceutical company Spofa, whose chemists were talented synthesizers of various ergot alkaloids. Grof put in a request for the company to begin producing LSD; a request quickly approved by communist authorities. Soon thereafter began production of the only pharmaceutically pure LSD in the eastern bloc. (Sandoz was still producing the only pure LSD in the West.)." http://www.alternet.org/story/146393/how_stanislav_grof_helped_launch_the_dawn_of_a_new_psychedelic_research_era Sandoz stopped production in 1965 (or so) -- well before it became illegal. So, what happened when the dwindling supplies were hoarded by those lucky enough to have some? Where did the 5000 "pharmaceutical" hits taken by Michael Hollingshead to start the World Psychedelic Center come from? Prague. A couple years ago I was at a gallery opening in NYC and got into a conversation with a fellow about the history of LSD. He told me had just come back from Prague, where he helped a friend relocate some theatrical sets to a warehouse outside the city. They stopped for some coffee when the field pointed to the Spofa plant across the road and said that they used to make LSD. An argument ensued so they decided to approach an old fellow who was standing outside the gates smoking. When they asked if it was true, his answer was, "Yes, we used to make LSD but strictly for experimental purposes." "Like what?" he was asked. Taking a drag on his cigarette, "Oh, like San Francisco." he replied. As far as I'm concerned, the "missing-link" for the widespread use of LSD (beginning around 1965) is the KGB -- making that the most important "untold" piece of the puzzle in terms of the real-world history that we are still trying to overcome today. Crowley and the SS, etc., not so much.Before 1933, ergotamine—an ergot alkaloid derivative, present in the sclerotia of the Claviceps purpurea fungus—had been isolated in its crystalline form by Arthur Stoll in 1918 at Sandoz laboratories, not far from Germany and Dachau (where the Dachau concentration camp was later to be established by the Nazi government), and Stoll patented the alkaloid. In 1917, Sandoz had granted Stoll, then a young Swiss chemist and a student of the Jewish German organic chemist Richard Willstätter,[16] the opportunity of setting up a laboratory to develop new bioactive drugs.[17] But the goal of isolating these alkaloids had been underway for more than fifty years prior to Stoll’s discovery, with Charles Tanret obtaining ergotinine cristalisee in 1875, and the Swiss pharmacist F. Kraft having, among discovering many other ergotamine alkaloids, extracted a fraction composed mainly of the ergotoxine group alkaloids, which he named ‘hydroergotonine’ in 1906. http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/ My best guess is that Stoll Sr. was a Steinerite "Rosicrucian" and that Hofmann was someone with similar propensities but probably more "freelance" with less organizational orientation. He was familiar with ergot used on the farm birthing livestock. Given the typical split between "esoteric" (i.e. private/secret) an "exoteric" (i.e. public/cover-story), I'm pretty sure Hofmann didn't think he was "lying" but rather keeping the important details among those who had a "need-to-know" -- on the basis that the "uninitiated" had no right to the information and would only "profane" it if they knew. In some of my interviews, for instance with Willis Harman, I got a lot because he apparently thought I came from a "higher level." A naive reporter/author would probably never get "inside" the situation for the simple reason that they cannot credibly enter into the conversation with sufficient "authority." Anyone with an "esoteric" orientation is capable of, even compelled to hide the "truth." Indeed, the ‘I-know-something-you-don't’ seems to be a major part of the psychology involved. This is, after all, why the story must be told, since those who have told it so far seem to be largely "esotericists" (or those who "respect" their “right-to-secrecy’). I don't know of anyone who point-blank asked Hofmann about the truth of alternative claims (as, for instance Marty Lee says he did *not* do and neither did people like Thom Lyttle or Morgan Russell when they had access to Hofmann) -- which is when the issue of deliberate deception tends to come up. I'm mostly interested in the "unwritten" history of psychedelics and some of you know me from my posts on the MAPS list, including my 2006 "Pre-History of LSD." My goal is to get the full story of psychedelics out. One way to deal with [those who mount inquisitions of “guilt by association” is to] grab the narrative back with more thoughtful research, since they mostly thrive on the "paranoia" and "coincidence" that still surrounds these "forbidden" topics. I suspect that a careful analysis of the "true" history -- much of which has been deliberately "hidden" -- is the only disinfectant that will work to help clean up the situation. Psychedelic POMO One topic I'm working on now is the influence of LSD on the French philosophical scene in the 1960s. Famously, Michel Foucault tripped in Death Valley in 1975. But, in 1970, he wrote an essay praising Gilles Deleuze where he compares the philosophical impact of LSD to opium. So, how early was his first trip? Could it have been as far back as the 1950s? What did LSD have to do with his interest in the history of "madness" (in an era where many referred to psychedelics as "psychotomemetics")? One of the major contributors then (and now through his "disciple" Slavoj Zizek) was Jacques Lacan. Lacan's early psychiatric work was associated with Jean Delay, in whose lab Lacan ran his weekly seminars from 1953-63. Delay is credited with coining the term "psychopharmacology" and experimented with mescaline, psilocybin and LSD. He's even mentioned by Hofmann in "My Problem Child." Yes, as the first President of the World Psychiatric Association, it is probably fair to say that he was involved in MKULTRA. Could the French "pomo" philosophers have gotten access to these psychedelics through French medical/psychiatric Cold War circles? And, how might these still-undocumented experiences have influenced their philosophy – their deconstruction paradigm? That's one of the chapters still to be written. Needless to say, there are many others . . . Summary of the Notes – Here is a rough "historical" outline of what seems to be missing -- 1) Rosicrucian-style "chemical" initiation became a widespread possibility in the 19th century, with the rise of synthetic chemistry. At the same time it became a widespread attraction with the rise of "occultism" driven by the electric media environment. Reference: Alchemy as personal transformation, Rosenkreutz "Chymical Wedding," James Webb "Occult Underground/Establishment," McLuhan "Laws of Media," synthesis of mescaline etc. 2) The "chemical" with the longest/deepest history of initiatory usage in the West is ergot -- stretching from Eleusinian Mysteries, through the Catholic Church into Rosicrucian masonry, etc. Dan Merkur relates it to the Holy Grail, death-rebirth, and visions of light: “All of the original grail romances, from Chrétien’s Conte del Graal through the Post-Vulgate Queste and Heinrich’s Crown, described the grail in terms that were appropriate for the hidden manna of the medieval church. The hidden manna was the secret of the grail.” He discusses the specific teachings of Philo of Alexandria, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux that refer to special meditations used with the “psychedelic sacrament.” Revelatory power coupled with the rational exercise of the mind facilitates a qualitatively enhanced state of religious transcendence in the seeker.

In The Mystery of Manna, Merkur describes evidence that the miraculous bread that God fed the Israelites in the wilderness was ergot-infused. Many religious authorities over the centuries have secretly known the identity and experience of manna and have left a rich record of their involvement with this sacred substance. Reference: Dan Merkur, The Psychedelic Sacrament; Hofmann et al "Road to Eleusis," Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony, Isenheim Altar, Hieronymus Bosch "Garden of Earthly Delights," St. Anthony's Fire, Illuminati HQ called "Eleusis." Jacob Bachofen, Nietzsche "Birth of Tragedy", etc. 3) Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy became a major Rosicrucian "conduit," emphasizing the importance of Eleusis by staging "Mystery" plays, provoking a "battle of the magicians" with the Nazis, who burned down the original Goetheneum in Dornach. Their response was the synthesis of LSD, by Anthroposophy-related chemists at Sandoz, as an anti-Hitler "peace pill," turning "alchemy" into 20th century occult "chemical" warfare. Reference: Use of chemicals in warfare, Steiner's autobiographical "Fritz" the plant-man, Schure "The Great Initiates," Steiner as both Goethe's and Nietzsche's archivist, Sandoz and plant-based pharmaceuticals, Bachofen and Paracelus as Basel-based initiates, St. Anthony hospitals in Basel. Use of mescaline in "occult" circles in Germany. Leo Perutz "St. Peter's Snow," etc. 4) There is a close affinity between the "intelligence services" and "secret societies" -- including both the US OSS/CIA and the Russian NKVD/KGB, with each drawing on long-standing associations with German "occult" influences. Picking up on the Steinerite opposition to Hitler, both the US and Russian began to experiment with "initiatory" chemicals during/before WW II. Reference: Allen Dulles posted in Zurich and later launching MKULTRA, Skull & Bones and OSS, Billington "The Icon and the Axe," Rosenthal "The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture," Blavatsky and Roerich," etc. 5) During the Cold War, these CIA/KGB "occultists" came to see LSD as a basis for establishing World Peace, in parallel to the USA/Russian attempts to use atomic weapons to achieve the same goal of establishing a "One World Government" by making all-out-war "unthinkable" -- leading to Pugwash and the United Nations, etc. Reference: Capt. Al Hubbard ("marvelous triple agent"), Cord (CIA and World Federalism) & Mary Pinchot Meyer (murder and dosing JFK), Tim Leary (as CIA asset), H.G. Wells "The Shape of Things to Come," Aldous Huxley "Doors of Perception," Esalen, hot-tub diplomacy, and Soviet "psychotronics," etc. Esalen was certainly one of the places where the CIA and KGB interfaced. My "informants" were very clear that the CIA *and* the KGB were "working together" on many aspects of all this. The notion that they were "mortal enemies" likely doesn't hold true when you get into the "alchemical" aspects of their efforts. To the extent that Willis Harman, yes, quoting Al Hubbard, was correct that the CIA was a "flaming shield protecting the gnostic truth," one has to imagine that there were those in the KGB with similar ambitions. As "alchemists," they had a much longer historic perspective than the Soviet Union or the USA of the 1950s/60s. My suggestion is that LSD was born of that "alchemical" impulse, with significant involvement from both the CIA and KGB. 6) When the CIA got cold-feet and pulled out of LSD production (Sandoz, circa 1965), the KGB kept going with SPOFA supplying both the pharmaceutical "blue acid" and the chemical precursors for "underground" production. The San Francisco (Acid Tests), Los Angeles (Laurel Canyon), London (World Psychedelic Center) and Paris (Situationist) activities all relied on KGB sources for their "counter-cultural disruption." Reference: Owsley, Hollingshead, Leary, Trocchi, Stark, etc. 7) The French "pomo" scene was led by psychoanalysts, like Lacan and Gauttari, and had an early focus on "madness" w/ Foucault and had access to psychedelics through "medical" channels) . . . The *NEW* Center for Culture and Technology Jean Delay was Jacques Lacan's "mentor" and the leading French researcher on psychedelics . . . Although Delay’s works on psychopharmacology do not constitute the major part of his scientific contribution, they remain the most famous because of their scientific level as well as their topicality. Jean Delay invented the word "psychopharmacology" along with a whole field of research on psychological and behavioral modifications induced by drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin (1). http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=175748 Delay was chair of the first International Congress in Psychiatry held in Paris in 1950 and was elected member of the Académie de médicine in 1955. His neurological training is reflected in his dissertation on tactile agnosia and other work published in this area. He coined the term "neuroleptic" and introduced the use of reserpine into psychiatry. His interests extended to the use of antidepressants, and he completed his research on mescaline by studying LSD and psilocybin, which he referred to as "oneirogenics." He was also involved in the discovery of Largactil, used in psycho-pharmacology. In 1960 he chaired the first Congrès de médicine psychosomatique (Congress of Psychosomatic Medicine). Édouard Pichon introduced him to psychoanalysis before the Second World War during a brief training analysis. Delay retained a nuanced, nondoctrinaire attitude toward Sigmund Freud's work. During the Occupation, the psychoanalysts John Leuba, Georges Parcheminey, Jacques Lacan, and Marc Schlumberger worked in his department; after the war Jacques Lacan and André Green had a psychoanalytic practice there. His department also hosted Jacques Lacan's Wednesday seminars (from November 18, 1953, to November 20, 1963) and Friday seminars, until it was decided that they were no longer appropriate. http://nosubject.com/index.php?title=Jean_Delay Another significant, psychotherapeutically valuable characteristic of LSD inebriation is the tendency of long forgotten or suppressed contents of experience to appear again in consciousness. Traumatic events, which are sought in psychoanalysis, may then become accessible to psychotherapeutic treatment. Numerous case histories tell of experiences from even the earliest childhood, vividly recalled during psychoanalysis under the influence of LSD. This does not involve an ordinary recollection, but rather a true reliving; not a reminiscence, but rather a reviviscence, as the French psychiatrist Jean Delay has formulated it.http://www.maps.org/books/mpc/chapter4.htmlhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1044496/pdf/medhist00007-0087.pdf Medical History, 2002, 46: 221-240 LSD Therapy in Dutch Psychiatry: Changing Socio-Political Settings and Medical Sets STEPHEN SNELDERS and CHARLES KAPLAN* In an earlier version, circulated in some circles, Stahlman makes the following points, all of which can be flushed out with research: 1) Appreciation for the psychotropic effects of ergot is older than the human race. Ergot spores and fungus have also been found in Neolithic caves throughout Europe and there is some evidence from Paleolithic times.. Gnostic Visions: Uncovering the Greatest Secret of the Ancient World, by Luke A. Myers It has been suggested by archaeologists that some of the Neolithic cave paintings found in Ireland were inspired either by ergot or other hallucinogenic fungi. Bog bodies from northwestern Europe may have been special individuals in their societies; their deaths have elements of sacrifice, including traces of hallucinogenic ergot in the belly and a careful postmortem positioning of the body. 2) In human pre-history, ergot was extensively used as an aid for mothers in childbirth and less frequently in the death process. 3) The close association between ergot and the fertility rites at Eleusis transformed this ancient birthing application into an enduring cult practice. It is well known that the Mysteries continued for almost two thousand years, during which time the Greek world evolved tremendously in both intellectual and religious aspects. The greatest intellects of the ancient world testified repeatedly to the salvific power of participation in the Mysteries--why then assume that those secret rites and teachings would not also have adapted to the times, so as to contain allusions to the deepest spiritual insights of which their devotees were capable? Scholars disagree widely over the significance, much less the contents [ergot?, divine mushroom?], of the kykeon. Some have maintained that it must have had a sacramental character involving a communion with, or assimilation of, the spirit of the deity (Loisy 69; Jevons 365ff.). This is the 'sober offering' of the mysteries. One's mind became 'sober,' enlightened.The barley added to the kykeon became magical in the following manner: it molded, grew ergot, the sclerotia, erysibe, 'rust,' the 'beard' which produced tiny entheogenic mushrooms, Claviceps purpurea. Clay sealings have been found at Knossos which reproduce molded barley in conjunction with lion-men, and several Palace tablets take cognizance of the barley beard in their accounting. A jasper prism stamp-seal was found in Middle Minoan layers, c. 1600 BC, which produces the 'beard' along with the barley. (pages 126-128) http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=214292#ixzz2xxEis47a 4) As the dominant cult for Athens, the Eleusinian Mysteries and ergot begin to became central to critical aspects of 2000+ years of Western culture. Perhaps echoing Neolithic practices, Mysteries provide a vision. The highest promise for the mystai (Greek, "initiates") was the comprehension and evocation of the natural life-death-rebirth cycle. Birth, Rebirth and Immortality are the perennial themes of ancient Mystery religions -- in metaphor "descent" (loss), "search" and "ascent". Rites and practices of Mystery religions take us deeper and deeper into the labyrinth or the underworld where we examine a series of unanswerable and awesome questions and, are, accordingly, altered by this willingness to enter and be worked upon by the elemental forces that live in the domain of the unknown and unknowable. This is not descending into chaos, though it feels chaotic when we are there. It is entering into domains that cannot be understood in the ways we generally seek and convey understanding. It is entering into worlds that operate by different laws altogether. Integrity is required and so we must be reconstituted; this is the way of transformation. 5) One of the subjects investigated at Eleusis, the seasonally shared public mythic cult practices of a "natural religion", was the relationship between dosage of a "poison" and one's fate. What may be medicinal at small doses can become psychotropic and then lethal at higher doses - as shaped by one's personal relationship to the Gods. 6) Following the end of ceremonies at Eleusis after Goths destroyed the sanctuary around 400, these ergot-based initiatory practices were preserved in the Greek community in Constantinople and elsewhere. Both the Cathars and the Brothers trace their origins to Constantinople and (therefore) to Eleusis. Alaric ravaged Attica but spared Athens, which capitulated at once to the conqueror. In 396, he wiped out the last remnants of the Mysteries at Eleusis in Attica, ending a tradition of esoteric religious ceremonies that had lasted since the Bronze Age. Or did it just go further underground? Broadly speaking, the anti-Church in the West has consistently traced its routes back to the Eleusinian Mysteries (i.e. what became the Orthodox Church in the 2nd and 3rd Romes, as in Russia etc) -- which is why the "pre-history" of LSD is particularly important. This is also why the "KGB" role in the 60s -- as the source of both "blue-acid" LSD (that sparked the British "invasion") and the ergotamine precursor for the "underground" labs, out of Spofa in Prague -- remains the biggest *untold* story of our lifetimes. Magic chemistry has and continues to play an unsung part in history.In its pure form, LSD (d-lysergic acid diethyl amide) is an odorless, colorless, and either tart-tasting (if in the tartrate form) or tasteless crystal substance. The major pharmaceutical company manufacturing pure LSD, for research purposes, is the Spofa United Pharmaceutical Works in Prague, Czechoslovakia, although it has been manufactured by many others. Besides Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in Switzerland, there was the Eli Lilly & Company with the patent for the Garbrecht process (the most efficient process for the manufacture of LSD), and Farmitillia of Milan, Italy, which perfected the deep-vat cultivation of ergot, a mold that grows on rye, among other places, and serves as a source for lysergic acid monohydrate, the main precursor of LSD. In addition, a number of U.S. pharmaceutical firms make small amount of LSD for testing purposes. (Eisner, https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_writings1.shtml) LSD: Eleusis --> Constantinople --> St. Petersburg/Languedoc (Cathars & Brothers) --> Prague/Munich --> San Francisco/London . . . http://www.chymicalphilosophers.org/celestial-botany/ http://www.danmerkur.com/onlinewritings/Grail.PDF Hidden Manna and the Holy Grail: The Psychedelic Sacrament in Arthurian Romance by Dan Merkur http://www.danmerkur.com/onlinewritings/HidManna.PDF 7) Early crusaders carried a version of these ergot-based practices back to southern France along with the relics of St. Anthony the Hermit (desert father of monasticism) in the 11th century. Centered near Arles, on the east side of the Rhone, the hospice escaped the Albigensian Crusade. 8) Based around this knowledge and these artifacts, a Roman Catholic monastic order known as the Hospital Order of St. Anthony (aka Antonians or Antonites) was established under the rule of Augustine in 1247 and spread its influence from London to Jerusalem and beyond. According to Sandoz' corporate history, the Antonites eventually had two hospitals in Basel. St. Anthony [of Padua] lived and preached during the time of the Italian Cathars. He was known as the "hammer of heretics." The Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony, Order of St. Anthony or Canons Regular of St. Anthony of Vienne (Canonici Regulares Sancti Antonii, or CRSAnt), also Antonines, were a Roman Catholic congregation founded in 1095 or so, with the purpose of caring for those suffering from the common medieval disease of St. Anthony's fire. As a hermit and founder of monasticism, Anthony is identified with the "book of nature" and not writing. St. Anthony was the focus of a Roman Catholic Hospital Order which flourished from the 13th to 18th centuries and was responsible for treating the effects of ergot poisoning or St. Anthony's Fire. 9) This Order was assigned the public role of countering the effects of ergot poisoning, otherwise known as St. Anthony's Fire, through operating what may have been the first worldwide pharmacy as well as the specialized use of amputation. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the order was responsible for caring for the sick of the papal household. Saint Anthony's Fire It seems not only possible, but plausible, that monks used to treating outbreaks of St. Anthony's Fire might also learn something of the salvific effect of small amounts of ergot, perhaps purified by some method. They were in a perfect position to notice the effects of dosge and other variables on the population, at large. Also known as 'sacred fire' and 'invisible fire,' ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, traditionally due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus which infects rye and other cereals, and more recently by the action of a number of ergoline-based drugs. It is also known as ergotoxicosis, ergot poisoning and Saint Anthony's Fire. Ergot poisoning is one proposed explanation of bewitchment. Convulsive symptoms include painful seizures and spasms, diarrhea, paresthesias, itching, mental effects including mania or psychosis, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Usually the gastrointestinal effects precede central nervous system effects. 10) Privately this Order continued to practice initiations, with the acceptance and participation of Church authorities, based partly on the use of ergot-derived preparations. In addition, there were various related "military" orders related to the Antonites, including the Knights of Saint Anthony. 11) There is widespread artistic evidence of these religious practices, particularly in the work of Antonite-related painters Hieronymus Bosch (see his c.1500 "Temptation of St. Anthony" triptych in Lisbon) and Mathis Neithardt (aka "Grunewald," see the c.1515 Isenheim Altar polyptich, now in Colmar.) W.A. Stoll later mentions the Isenheim Altar in his 1947 account of the effects of LSD. 12) In the 18th century, the Roman church became increasingly threatened by "secret" initiatory societies -- as shown by the 1738 order excommunicating Catholics who belonged to Masonic Lodges -- culminating in the anti-clerical role of the "Illuminati" in the French Revolution. 13) In 1777, after having been nearly wiped out during the Reformation, a failed reform of the order in 1630 and confiscation of its properties in the French Revolution, the Antonites were canonically merged into the Knights of Malta, which in turn was broken up (and partially re-Romanized) after Napolean captured Malta in 1798. 14) There is evidence that these Mysteries-derived and at times ergot-based initiatory practices did not disappear with the Antonites and found their way into 19th century Theosophical and Rosicrucian groups as well as those involved in "Greek" oriented classical studies. 15) In 1847 at Columbia College in New York, the "Greek" fraternity St. Anthony Hall (aka Delta Psi) was formed to continue this "secret tradition" and Col. Henry Steele Olcott -- who was later join with Madame Blavatsky to form Theosophy -- was one of four 1849 pledges at Columbia. 16) In 1866 at the University of Leipzig, Frederich Nietzsche and Erwin Rohde became ergot-based initiates of a "neo-Eleusinian" group that was devoted to understanding early Greek culture by actually living as the Greeks did. 17) In 1872 in Basel, Nietzsche published his first work, "Birth of Tragedy," based on his close association with his mentor and prominent Basel citizen Johann Jacob Bachofen -- in which he counterpoises Dionysis (i.e. Eleusis) with Apollo. 18) Nietzsche, who was removed from the streets of Turin in 1889 and presumed to have "gone mad," was known to have been a wide-ranging drug taker, in part for his infirmities. Among the compounds citied is a preparation that is presumed to have included cannabis and opium as well as an ergot-derivative, ostensibly meant for migraines. 19) In 1896 in Wiemar, German Theosophist Rudolf Steiner was invited to become Nietzsche's archivist by his sister, giving him access to Nietzsche's private papers. Steiner had previously studied the esoteric aspects of Goethe's work and had begun publishing his own theosophical writings in 1894. 20) In 1897 in Munich, Ludwig Klages (another Leipzig graduate), Stefan George, Otto Gross and others started a group known as the "Cosmic Circle." Explicitly based on recreating "Eleusinian" cult activity and implicitly on using drugs to achieve "ecstatic" states, the circle also popularized the works of Bachofen and Nietzsche. 21) In 1918 in Basel, Sandoz scientist Arthur Stoll isolates the ergot alkaloid Ergotamine, which is later offered as Gynergen, intended to be used in birthing to stop post-pardum hemorrhaging as well as for severe migraine headaches.Looking for a new field of research, I asked Professor Stoll to let me continue the investigations on the alkaloids of ergot, which he had begun in 1917 and which had led directly to the isolation of ergotamine in 1918. Ergotamine, discovered by Stoll, was the first ergot alkaloid obtained in pure chemical form. Although ergotamine quickly took a significant place in therapeutics (under the trade name Gynergen) as a hemostatic remedy in obstetrics and as a medicament in the treatment of migraine, chemical research on ergot in the Sandoz laboratories was abandoned after the isolation of ergotamine and the determination of its empirical formula. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the thirties, English and American laboratories had begun to determine the chemical structure of ergot alkaloids. They had also discovered a new, watersoluble ergot alkaloid, which could likewise be isolated from the mother liquor of ergotamine production. So I thought it was high time that Sandoz resumed chemical research on ergot alkaloids, unless we wanted to risk losing our leading role in a field of medicinal research, which was already becoming so important. Professor Stoll granted my request, with some misgivings: "I must warn you of the difficulties you face in working with ergot alkaloids. These are-exceedingly sensitive, easily decomposed substances, less stable than any of the compounds you have investigated in the cardiac glycoside field. But you are welcome to try." (Hofmann, Problem Child, Ch 1) 22) In 1922 in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner's original wooden Goetheanum "cathedral" is burned to the ground, presumed to be on orders from Steiner's rival "magician," Adolf Hitler. Steiner's Anthroposophy continues to have its headquarters outside Basel to this day, following Steiner's death in 1925. Bright Colors Falsely Seen: Synaesthesia and the Search for Transcendental, Kevin T. Dannhttp://books.google.com/books?id=dxxX9qAnRVsC&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=Rudolf+Steiner,+lsd&source=bl&ots=diPteWtHwT&sig=8ER3B_F2JkiCxb636GFK1vhb6uc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eZpMU6ixK6aIygHXn4HwDw&ved=0CHIQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Rudolf%20Steiner%2C%20lsd&f=false Steiner, The Mystery Of The Eleusis, Kessinger Publishing, LLC (December 8, 2005) Steiner, http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA232/English/GC1985/19231214p01.html Mystery Centres: Lecture X: The Chthonic and the Eleusinian Mysteries Dornach, December 14th, 1923. "Spirit triumphant! Flame through the weakness of timid, fainthearted souls! Burn up egoism, kindle compassion, so that selflessness, the lifestream of humanity, may flow as the wellspring of spiritual rebirth!" — Rudolf Steiner 23) An interview was published in 1977 in a book titled "Beyond the Mechanical Mind: An investigation by Peter Fry and Macolm Long based on the ABC radio series '. . . And Something Else is Happening Here.'" where on page 101-102 Harman is quoted as saying, "The story really starts way back in 1935 with a group of followers of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner who lived in a village in Southern Germany. In 1935 a dark cloud was over Europe so the members of this group set out very deliberately to synthesize chemicals which were like the natural vegetable substances which they were well aware had been used in all the world's major religious traditions down through the centuries. By 1938 they had synthesized psilocybin, LSD and about thirty other drugs. Then they stopped to think about the consequences of letting all of this loose, and decided against it. They decided that they were not sure what the negative effects of the drugs would be and that it just wasn't a very wise thing to do. 24) In 1927 in Basel, Sandoz hired 21 year-old Albert Hofmann to work as an organic chemist. Hofmann, who was born in 1906 in Baden and studied in Zurich, later describes a series of natural "mystical" experiences he had as a youth, perhaps similar to those described by Capt. Al Hubbard in his youth. Excerpt from an interview with Huston Smith about Timothy Leary and the Psychedelic Movement, from Outside Looking In.RF: Did you have any idea of what was to come when you first became acquainted with sacred drugs?HS: Before answering your question I want to take exception to your calling them "sacred drugs." They have sacred possibilities, I am not going to back down on that. But Aldous Huxley was wise in calling them "heaven and hell drugs," and hell connotes what is demonic rather than sacred. Here we are back with my point about their ambiguous nature.Now to your question: Not at the start. As you noted during the first year the mood was wildly optimistic, for all signals seemed to read green. You've touched on the important ones. Psychologically, the psychedelics promised easier access to repressed unconscious materials, shortcutting years of psychoanalysis. In behavior change they held the promise of reducing the recidivism of paroled prisoners. And in my prime interest, they seemed to hold the promise of rolling back the materialistic world view that imprisons us by showing people—causing them to see directly—that Nietzche was wrong in announcing that God was dead.RF: Was it apparent right from the start that these were religious sacraments when they arrived at Harvard in 1960?HS: To me it was, though set and setting quickly entered the picture. This again makes me restive when you refer to them categorically as "religious sacraments" for that seems to position them in a linear, one-to-one relationship with religion.... Conclusions LSD is the *least* well understood "technology" of the 20th century -- since, like the atom bomb it was deliberately introduced to fundamentally change society but was then wrapped in a "cover-story" to disguise what was going on. The "official" story is that it was ALL an accident. Discovered by accident. Spread by accident. In fact, it was (mostly) quite deliberate. The origins are very old and began with the Eleusinian Mysteries in Athens -- in which every person (including women and slaves) was expected to participate at least once in their lives. This is the only known example of an entire population being put through a "psychedelic" initiation (which are widespread in "primitive" societies but generally only for the shaman/priests), as (partially) documented here -- http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Eleusis-Unveiling-Mysteries/dp/1556437528/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396539774&sr=8-1&keywords=road+to+eleusis Later, the Mysteries were picked up as one of themes of speculative Freemasonry and Eleusis became a constant refrain for masons and their more "esoteric" versions, particularly the "Rosicrucians" (concentrated in Germany), as documented here -- https://www.academia.edu/3787848/Masonry_and_the_Mysteries_of_Eleusis_Revisited_Threshing_Floors_and_Waterfalls By the late 19th-century, the Rosicrucians had morphed into the Theosophical Society and their German section was headed by Rudolf Steiner, who later split and called his group Anthroposophy. The Anthroposophical Society international center is at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. Today they run the Waldorf Schools and are headquartered in Dornach, just outside Basel, where they still conduct "plays" based on the Mysteries. http://www.anthroposophy.org/calendar/event-details/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=1269&cHash=ab6856044a8ebfcfbc826cda61bae56e Many of the chemists at Sandoz in the 1920s were a part of this group -- where LSD was deliberately synthesized as a "safe" alternative to the potentially poisonous preparation of the *ergot* fungus as the source for the ritual, which had been going on for 3000-or-so years (in various venues, including as a "secret" Catholic sacrament in the Middle Ages.) The notion of using a synthetic version of ergot for a general "religious" revival was even the topic of a novel published in Germany in 1933 (5 years before the supposed first synthesis and 10 years before the "accidental" discovery of its potency) -- First published and banned by the Nazis in 1933, this work follows Dr. George Amberg as he emerges from an unexplained coma and discovers a plot by the government to manipulate the population by means of a drug http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Peters-Snow-Leo-Perutz/dp/1559700831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396541094&sr=8-1&keywords=st+peters+snow+perutz The "release" of all this into the general population in the 1960s was *not* the plan of the Sandoz chemists, who were interested in just giving it to an "elite" of world-leaders (like JFK etc) but was instead the handiwork of the KGB -- who spread it around in NYC, San Francisco, California, London, and Paris, etc. in the mid-60s as a part of their Cold War "disruption" of the West. That part of the story is now being researched for publication by a few authors (with my help). Recordings of the 1976 radio interview are available in the National Library of Australia, under the title "Culture and Counterculture". Presumably anyone with access to the National Library of Australia can find it here -- http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/17557015?selectedversion=NBD6834818 Excerpts of the interview were published in 1977 in a book titled "Beyond the Mechanical Mind: An investigation by Peter Fry and Malcolm Long based on the ABC radio series '. . . And Something Else is Happening Here.'" On page 101-102 Harman is quoted as saying, "The story really starts way back in 1935 with a group of followers of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner who lived in a village in Southern Germany. In 1935 a dark cloud was over Europe so the members of this group set out very deliberately to synthesize chemicals which were like the natural vegetable substances which they were well aware had been used in all the world's major religious traditions down through the centuries. By 1938 they had synthesized psilocybin, LSD and about thirty other drugs. Then they stopped to think about the consequences of letting all of this loose, and decided against it. They decided that they were not sure what the negative effects of the drugs would be and that it just wasn't a very wise thing to do. Five years later, in 1943, when Europe was really in bad shape, they decided apparently that the possible negative consequences were nothing compared to the consequences of not doing this. Now, two members of this group, which lived in a very tight religious community, were in the Sandoz chemical company -- that's partly how this project came to be. One of them was the chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann. He cooked up the newspaper story, that everyone has heard by now, about the accidental ingestion of the LSD and the realization of what its properties were after an amazing bicycle ride home and the visions and so on . . . " “Wonder Bread” & the Cup of Wonder I spent the better part of a day with Willis at IoNS (arranged by Tom Furman, following a breakfast with him in Palo Alto, precipitated by some comments I had been posting about SRI online) in which he not only confirmed the details but added a good deal about the role of the Catholic Church's use of ergot as a "secret sacrament" and of the CIA as the "flaming shield that protects the gnostic truth." In my experience, you only get answers if you ask the questions. I asked Tim Leary the questions. I asked Owsley the questions. I asked Willis Harman the questions. I asked many people the questions. Unless you asked those questions -- of multiple participants, working it like an "investigation" -- then you can't claim to know what happened. Martin Lee reports the following in his 1987 (?) "The CIA, LSD and the Occult" interview in High Frontiers #4: https://archive.org/stream/highfrontiers04high/highfrontiers04high_djvu.txt "What if Hofmann really knew all along what it was, or somebody else did? Again, I'll put this into context. I don't believe that he is lying. But it is curious . . . There is another story which I did not put in my book. According to Captain Al Hubbard, Hofmann did not discover it in 1943, nor in '38, but much earlier." This interview was archived online by Ken Goffman. Would it be a good idea to flesh this out and publish the "true" history to help reset mistaken impressions? Yes, I believe it would and I'm available, based on my interviews, to help those who are writing about psychedelics get the story "straight" -- in which not only the CIA and the Church figure prominently, but also the KGB! Sandoz was CIA and Spofa was KGB. You really can't tell the "players" without a scorecard. MK-ULTRA was an "umbrella" for funding psychedelics (in the West) in the 1950s/60s -- which came to an end (circa 1967), at which point the FILES were *destroyed* -- what came out in the 1970s (as a result of FOIA requests by the NY Times and *me*) were specifically constructed to paint a "classic" COVER-STORY and, indeed, anyone who believes that was the "real" MK-ULTRA is a candidate for being called a "naif". My approach has always been as follows: 1) try to understand your *own* actions by removing yourself from the "good vs. bad" of the situation 2) talk to as many people as you can who were involved 3) specifically look for people who will tell you *different* stories 4) conduct the interviews in *private* and promise not to reveal your sources 5) put all of it into the best overall context that you can figure out -- "believing" anyone who has a their own identity wrapped up in the story they tell you (as is the case with nearly 100% of what is said in public about psychedelics, where people routinely paint themselves as "heroes") is bound to take you in the WRONG direction . . . !! My approach is to promise those I talk with to *not* reveal them as a source. After much experience with this, I've found that's the only way to get an "honest" answer. So, my work has no "scholarly" use -- which is just fine with me! I spent 6 hours going over all this with Willis Harman (in his INS office). It was in late March 1995, set up by Tom Mandel at a breakfast I had with him at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto (just a few weeks before he died) -- how's that for "scholarly" precision? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mandel_(futurist) I have talked with many others who also got versions of the same story from him or from Capt. Al Hubbard (who was the ultimate source for most of this). Martin Lee on “Acceler8tor” describes what Hubbard told him *but* how he 1) didn't ask Hofmann about any of it and, 2) didn't even put it in "Acid Dreams" as a footnote? That's how the "truth" has been buried for all these years -- not because it wasn't "out there." I spent another 6 hours with Tim Leary in his home going over his *long* association with the CIA (starting in graduate school.) If Fadiman ASKED the same questions of Harman (or if YOU asked the same questions of Leary or Barron or Harman) and got *different* answers, then we should compare notes. If you *didn't* ask these questions, then you will just have to take my word for what they told me -- and then figure out how it fits into what you know otherwise (but only after you remove all the "good-vs-bad" bias that will inevitably cloud your judgment) . . . !! Infinity Initiations Yes. Ergot was used more-or-less continuously from antiquity (1000- BC) until the invention of LSD. Yes. The medieval Church had a secret psychedelic sacrament, described by Dan Merkur.In that the “small piece of bread” was kept in a reliquary, it was implicitly a relic, thegrail. The grail king consumed a third of the bread--possibly its material reality, as distinct from its imaginable form and intelligible idea. The exhibition and consumption of the grail was analogous to a Eucharist, but it did not involve a consecrated wafer. Neither was the grail procession an ecclesiastic rite. Gawain called the Grail a “miracle,” as did his host in the course of his reply. “Meanwhile the old lord was speaking. ‘Gawain,’ he said, ‘this miracle of God must not become common knowledge: it must be kept secret....you see the Grail....’”In its explicit statement that the miraculous nature of the bread was a secret, TheCrown implied that the bread manifested miraculous properties upon being consumed. The motif was perhaps the least secretive discussion in Arthurian romance of the hidden manna, the psychedelic sacrament of the medieval Church. Yes. In Nietzsche's times it was a part of some "student society" initiations, with Jacob Bachofen as a "master" in the network, which is why Fritz took over his "Dionysian" (e.g. Eleusinian) lectures at University of Basel. http://tribes.tribe.net/ethnobotany/thread/5a0356c2-b179-45b4-a6a1-a5ea44e0f36f Yes. Sandoz was deeply intertwined with the CIA -- including the synthesis of psilocybin and the investigation at Pont St Esprit. Sandoz has now morphed into Syngenta, second only to Monsanto in developing GMOs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta Yes. The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) is a teaching and research facility in psychiatry, neurology and related fields. Several generations have had odd relationships with UCLA. Sidney Cohen said once hardly anything went on at NPI that the CIA wasn't involved in. Of course Louis J. West, MD was one of their head researchers with his Air Force background in brainwashing. From 1954-1962 Los Angeles psychiatrist Oscar Janiger gave LSD-25 to more than 950 men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 81 and coming from all walks of life. He is best known for "turning on" Hollywood celebrities and well-known literary figures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Jolyon_West Yes. the KGB was in charge of the "psychotomemetic" experiments in Prague, which were transferred there after the 1956 uprising in Budapest. This is the topic behind Soderbergh's 1991 movie "Kafka," a mystery thriller that blurs the lines between fact and Kafka’s fiction. http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/steven-soderbergh-says-his-new-cut-of-kafka-will-be-a-hardcore-art-movie-20130529 Yes. Owsley confirmed the KGB source to me in an interview. Leary confirmed his close association with the CIA in my interview with him. The attitude was generally, "Yes, we know about where all this comes from but we are taking advantage of them, not them of us" -- as voiced by the Harvard group who gathered for Leary's death regarding the MKULTRA origin of their psilocybin. Hollingshead, Stark and Trochhi were international "men of mystery" with drug careers that bridged between the various "agencies." I never met/interviewed any of them but others who knew them. Much of what I know about this originally came from interviews I conducted with ex-CIA (and, later, ex-KGB) participants in the 1970s/80s. What now has to be done is to tell their story -- which, by agreement, cannot be "documented" -- with the otherwise available "evidence" to provide an overview of the bigger picture. "We can easily see how LSD inverts the relationships of ill humor, stupidity, and thought: it no sooner eliminates the supremacy of categories than it tears away the ground of its indifference and disintegrates the gloomy dumbshow of stupidity; and it presents this univocal and acategorical mass not only as variegated, mobile, asymmetrical, decentered, spiraloid, and reverberating but causes it to rise, at each instant, as a swarming of phantasm-events. As it slides on this surface at once regular and intensely vibratory, as it is freed from its catatonic chrysalis, thought invariably contemplates this indefinite equivalence transformed into an acute event and a sumptuous, appar­eled repetition….Drugs-if we can speak of them generally-have nothing at all to do with truth and falsity; only to fortune-tellers do they reveal a world "more truthful than the real." In fact, they displace the relative positions of stupidity and thought by eliminating the old necessity of a theater of immobility. But perhaps, if it is given to thought to confront stupidity, drugs, which mobilize it, which color, agitate, furrow, and dissipate it, which populate it with differences and substitute for the rare flash a continuous phosphorescence, are the source of a partial thought-perhaps." The note that follows this extract is from Deleuze: "what will people think of us?" One reason I wanted to get Manuel's attention was to see what he knows about when LSD "hit" in France and when Foucault & Deleuze first participated. Foucault had a famous "epiphany" while tripping in Death Valley in 1975 but I suspect they were both involved much earlier. Foucault's "Theatrum Philosophicum" (1970), suggests psychedelic consumption along with phantasm and philosophy. http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpfoucault5.htm In Memories Dreams and Reflections, Carl Jung claimed, “Life is a battleground, it always has been, and always will be; and if it was not so, existence would come to an end.” There is nothing in this interview that is inconsistent with the "battle of the magicians" hypothesis. Yes, the specific configuration of LSD-25 was an "accident" in the sense that they did not know which analog would have what properties. Yes, the research was being conducted by a commercial firm and, from the standpoint of its own internal planning as a pharmaceutical company. This was an investigation meant to produce new drugs for widespread sale. Based on the questions Hofmann was asked, he was telling the "truth," But, did Grof ask him about Anthroposophy? Or, Perutz's novel? Or, an Eleusinian revival? Based on the reaction I got from Grof when I briefly spoke with him in Basel in 2008, in which his "grandfatherly" demeanor immediately flipped into the inquisitional "Where did you hear about that?", my guess is that Dr. Grof knows a lot about the role the KGB played in the spreading of LSD in the West. The missing-link in the spread of LSD in the 60s is the KGB -- who supplied both the "blue-acid" ampules that turned on "sleepy London town" and the pre-cursors that fed Owsley, et al. Stan Grof is the "KGB's" gift to the LSD movement! The KGB-linked role that Esalen played in all this was underscored by Willis Harman, who told me that he stayed away on the advice of Capt. Al Hubbard, and is underscored by the Esalen/Russia exchanges beginning with Michael Murphy's 1971 "occult pilgrimage" and later “hot-tub diplomacy” at the center where KGB and American intelligentsia shared trips. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=esalen+kripal My sources often stressed how parts of *both* the CIA and KGB were a) populated with "esotericists" and b) trying to work together for "World Peace." LSD was a parallel plan to the development of atomic weapons...and both genies escaped their bottles and changed our world. Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, www.pugwash.org The Soviet interest may not have been as altruistic as infiltrative. The second author (Miller) learned from her CIA and NSA sources that the Soviets developed a strategy in the 1960s to impact the US through their habits. This is identical to their People’s War they waged at home, also known as The Long War, bankrupting their opponents politically, morally, and economically. The cold war never ended. They considered full-scale warfare useless. As a former Mankind Research Unlimited (MRU) associate, Stefan Possony reports, "the war goes away and returns. Strategic management can be improved by alternating the centers of gravity, re-escalating and de-escalating, multiple diversions, changes of targets, and through concealment and propaganda." http://mankindresearchunlimited.weebly.com/stefan-possony.html The Russian exile was Psychological Warfare expert with the Office of Naval Intelligence during WWII and on the Board of Directors of the CIA front, the American Security Council. He was called the "intellectual father of Star Wars" and "one of the most influential civilian strategic planners in the Pentagon" (Guardian, 1995). The focus of his life work was psychological warfare, with increasing attention to the conspiratorial aspects of the "bedroom-to-battlefield" syndrome of psychological disorientation. Media Massage "A common observation of European visitors to America is that life here is more collectivized and stereotyped than communists have ever aimed to achieve. It was always the central theme of Marx that direct political action was unnecessary. The machine was the revolutionary solvent of bourgeois society. Allow the dynamic logic of the machine full play in any kind of society and it will, said Marx, become communist automatically." --Marshall McLuhan, Revolutionary Conservatism, 1953, p.1 Was Hofmann an "archiacist" who was committed to a *revival* of our "pagan" past -- just as were the Nazis (and before them the "Rosicrucians")? If there was going to be a "battle of the magicians" in the 20th century, then they had to be fighting over "common ground" -- which was-and-is the modern "archeology" of our pre-Christian heritage. Leary identified and supported cyberculture as “the new LSD” for the 21st Century. And, this brings us back to the Trivium -- which was the primary way that our pagan ancestors "organized" what they knew about the world. LSD was deliberately introduced as a part of this "pagan revival" and conspiracy theories continue that "battle" over how we understand the world. The "Classical Trivium" is the basis of Western religion, starting in Greece, continuing through Rome and ultimately becoming the Roman Catholic Church. This is the *battle* that Marshall McLuhan called the "Ancient Quarrel" and it is the one that we are still fighting (even though it is buried under the debris of millennia of collapsed cultural institutions). If, as I've been told, the spreading of LSD was a part a wider 20th century battle for the "soul" of Western Civilization, then what was the basis for that civilization? How did it reproduce itself from its "origins" in Classical Greece? The answer is the Trivium. As the name implies, the Trivium was the three-part structure of educating the elites for "public service." It is the origin of what we know as the "Three R's." At the core was the practice of Rhetoric, which was the process of *persuading" the public about what needed to be done. There were two basic "roads" to that persuasion, Grammar (or the analogical "structure" of nature) and Dialectics (or the logical "rules" of philosophical reason). Depending on which historic period you are looking at, either the "structure" or the "rules" tended to take the upper hand in the expression of the *rhetoric* that defined that activity we call "culture." This made Rhetoric the "battleground" where Grammar and Dialectics fought their "Ancient Quarrel" throughout history. Likewise, Possony testified before a committee of the Eighty-Sixth Congress that "manipulation of language constitutes one of the Communists' most potent weapons in their drive for world domination." He also said that "to the Communists, words are tools to achieve effects, not means to communicate in the search for truth." The only person I know of who was able to step back from this "battle" and describe the outlines of this history was Marshall McLuhan. That battle continues to rage through media, agit-prop, contrived events, activated fantasies, and distorted historical narrative. In his Tavistock Lectures, Jung points out that, “The object, however, is not to reveal a supposed root cause of the neurosis but to establish a connection between consciousness and the unconscious that will result in the renewed progression of energy.” During WW II, McLuhan wrote his 1943 Cambridge UK PhD thesis, "The Classical Trivium," while teaching at St. Louis University. The situation was so uncertain that he organized to have copies of the chapters mailed to England on separate boats, not knowing if one of them would be sunk by U-boats. That thesis was scheduled to be published in the early 1970s, as the culmination of his meteoric rise to fame, but was cancelled along with his other projects after McLuhan lost his "protection" when he made an "ass" of himself at the 1969 Bilderberg meeting. He was apparently invited to "explain" what had happened in the May '68 student uprising in Paris (which, as it turns out was fueled by LSD!), and suggested that they arrange the chairs in a circle instead of straight lines, which greatly offended the "powers that be." Thinking in terms of *circles* is a "grammarian" sensibility -- reflecting the "circular" structure of natural rhythms -- whereas straight lines is the "dialectical" sensibility -- originating, in its modern expression, in the linearity of the printed word or what McLuhan called the "Gutenberg Galaxy." In much the same way that [conspiracy theorists, conservative media, and intelligence] plot to "character assassinate" opponents, McLuhan was "assassinated" by Jonathan Miller in his 1971 biography. Just as [talking heads] use the *rhetorical* device of "guilt by association" (i.e., agents of the "infamous MKUltra mind control CIA black op"), Miller played the same card by accusing McLuhan of being a "Vatican agent." He knew how the "secular" (and largely Jewish?) controlled publishing industry of the early 70s would react to that charge. Black-ball 'im! And, indeed, following Miller's hatchet job, no more McLuhan publishing projects were contracted, many were cancelled and those that were too far along to stop were sabotaged. The culmination of the last decade of McLuhan's work, "The Laws of Media," wasn't published until 1988, eight years after he died. Throughout the 70s/80/90s "The Classical Trivium" was passed around as McLuhan samizdat. Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. I got my first copy as a Wordperfect document, at a time when Word had already buried its earlier rival and few could even read the format. Indeed, as an "underground" document, only a handful of people had ever read it and, one suspects, even fewer understood what it was saying. http://www.amazon.com/The-Classical-Trivium-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397383500&sr=8-1&keywords=mcluhan+trivium\ Then, as a result of the 90s "McLuhan revival" -- driven largely by Kevin Kelly's decision to make McLuhan the "patron saint" of WIRED magazine (as an echo of the Whole Earth Catalog, which was also an artifact of the spread of LSD) -- the thesis was finally published in 2006. Despite the fact that there are now hundreds of scholars making their careers by studying McLuhan, not a single presentation at the week-long 2011 MM100 Centennial celebration in Toronto focused on the PhD thesis or the Trivium! That is because academia is overwhelmingly "logical" (i.e. premised on studying linear rules) and it cannot tolerate the "analogical" reasoning (i.e. circular structure) that got McLuhan in so much trouble in the first place. To make McLuhan "respectable," he has to be *linearized* -- as in the current false attempt to link him to "complexity theory." As McLuhan was abundantly clear, NO (linear) theory can encompass *real* (circular) nature. “Around this time, McLuhan met another noteworthy counterculture figure, Timothy Leary, who later remarked that there was no need to turn on McLuhan to LSD since the professor got high on the yoga of his art form–talk. As Leary explains, ‘He talks in circles, and spirals, and flower forms and mandala forms’.” (Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, p. 126). Both the Nazis and the "Rosicrucians" were a part of the attempts over the past few centuries to "retrieve" circular/analogical thinking -- albeit on pagan grounds in an attempt to avoid re-examining its crucial Christian heritage. McLuhan is clear in his PhD thesis that the medieval "grammarians" are the people who we now call the "alchemists." LSD is an *alchemical* drug. McLuhan had multiple meetings with Tim Leary and was credited with advised him on how to "promote" LSD, leading to the famous phrase, "Turn on, Tune In and Drop out." In fact, McLuhan's last book is called "Take Today: The Executive as Dropout." It is no accident that the modern intersection between "philosophy" (i.e., logical rules) and LSD produced people like Michel Foucault in France, whose entire anti-philosophical corpus is founded on an attack on Plato (i.e. on "dialectics")! Plato's mentor was Socrates and, as best I can tell, he was put to death (using the psychedelic hemlock) because he spoke up against the Eleusinian Mysteries -- or as it was described in his trial, "corrupting the youth of Athens." Foucault's institutional mentor was George Demuzil, whose 1924 PhD thesis (not yet translated into English) was titled "Le Festin d'Immortalitie" and deals with the parallels between Greek "ambrosia" and Indus Valley "soma." Sound familiar? The circularity of Dumezil's reasoning was rejected in 1920s France, so he left to make his career in Turkey, where circularity was apparently still permitted. Yes, of course Albert Hofmann an "alchemist" who was trying to *revive* circular/analogical thinking in an age dominated by linear/logical rhetoric . . . just like the Nazis were (prompting them to try to kill all of their opponents)! Ultimately, this is why Jan Irvin has to go on his "assassination" quest. He thinks that he is slaying the evil "alchemists," while fighting for his version of a Trivium that is dominated by the straight-line effort to stamp out "fallacy." But, apart from his obnoxious personality, he has got the Trivium all wrong! Cultural theorist, Arthur Kroker, outlines a dehumanizing vector: "what we traditionally have meant by human perception, (vision, insight, ethical judgment, discriminating between reality and illusion) has been effectively shut down, almost surgically replaced by the virtual vision machine of the militarized imagination. We are suddenly rendered vulnerable to the new virtual myths about the supposedly hygienic character of posthuman warfare." Information warfare (PSYOPS; Agitprop; psychotronics) is bloodless but just as pernicious. We live in a complex physical and social structure, historically located in space and time. Kroker suggests we develop filters against such psychic infiltration. He suggests that in radical crisis the individual must courageously refuse to assent to totalitarian power. The destiny of individual freedom depends on maintaining critical ethical judgment and a clarity that can filter out propaganda and rebel against it. Too bad, even our rebellions are controlled. The 'story' must be continually upgraded to keep the 'audience' engaged. In reality, we are living inside of a MYSTERY and for better-and-worse we are NOT heading back to the *Garden* (i.e., the goal of environmental movement that was also a byproduct of LSD) but instead confronted with the *digital* monsters that were spawned by our obsession with the *linear* "engineering" of the planet, society and even our biology. If we remain transfixed by the "logical," then we, as HUMANS, are extinct. Saving the planet for the *humans* means bringing back the "analogical" and since it is our responsibility and to do that, we need to *update* McLuhan's PhD thesis -- which ended with the Elizabethan Renaissance -- with a modern history of the Ancient Quarrel. The actual history of LSD, freed from its "pagan" religious affections, is a very important part of that long overdue and now 70-year-old update. Conclusions It is plausible that: LSD was a "Rosicrucian" (Cold War) "innovation" which was introduced by the CIA/MI6 (i.e. Hofmann & Sandoz) to initiate the "Western elites" (i.e. using Tim Leary working under the direction of "invisible college" members Aldous Huxley & Humphrey Osmond etc) to advance the cause of "World Peace" (i.e. "the reformation of the whole world"). But the Genie/Golem then got "out-of-the-bottle" (i.e. Tim Leary under the influence of "international man of mystery" Michael Hollingshead) and was continued post-1965 by the KGB (i.e. Grof & Spofa & Alex Trocchi etc.). The scheduling of LSD (and the parallel shutdown of MKULTRA, including the destruction of the files by CIA director Helms) was the result of the CIA pulling-back and the FBI et al moving in on the KGB efforts to "corrupt the youth" during what we now call the "counter-culture" -- as highlighted by Paul McCartney's "it was 20 years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play" (i.e. the release of LSD by Sandoz.) Leary had no idea what hit him -- having been a CIA "asset" (not "agent" since he was never on the direct payroll) since his days at Berkeley (as was Frank Barron and Harvard's arch-Jungian/gnostic Harry Murray), he was left without the protection of what he called "the best damn gang in town." It was the CIA that broke Leary out of Black Panther "jail" in Algiers and got him to Switzerland. And, it was the FBI who lured him to Afghanistan (ostensibly to work on the movie “Steppenwolf”) to rearrest him and get him sent to Folsom Prison -- where he was nicknamed "the professor" and confronted Panther fellow prisoner Eldridge Cleaver. Such were (some of) the details of my 6 hour "interview" with Tim in his home in 1993 -- facilitated by the then-boyfriend of Queen MU, Steve Beck (and the ganja I supplied.) Andy Roberts, author of "Albion Dreaming" (which largely ignores the CIA/MI6 vs. KGB angle but does discuss KGB "assets" Hollinghead, Trocchi and Ronald Stark) is now writing a book about Hollingshead. Iona, who invited me to this "chymical wedding," is writing the *true* story about how LSD was invented and introduced -- on purpose, not as an accident, by German Rosicrucians/Steinerites -- in the first place. Agrippa's unpublished essay on Leary relies on the testimony of those, like "Oz", who were (unwittingly?) also caught up this Cold War drama (i.e. part of the earlier effort to "dose" the elites) -- focusing on the "dodgy" personality of Leary but without ever mentioning the larger CIA/MI6 & KGB "Rosicrucian" context. My research is mostly done by asking the right people the right questions (at the right time.) As best I can tell, that's as good as it gets. Since all of this was done by people who knew better than to write-it-down, there is no "smoking gun." Philosophers have a license to speculate, above all about the ever-elusive nature of their “Stone”. Naturally, many will disagree, particularly “stakeholders” in their own theories or conventions. Leaders work hard to maintain control of the tribal mindset – counter-Gnostic approach not historical or even spiritual mentoring. So, why would you "want to convince"? None of us are trying to impress someone so that we can get *tenure* (or even hold onto our "jobs"). That's exactly where people like Tobias Churton go wrong. Why didn't Marty Lee put the Harman/Hubbard story into his book? So that it would be more "convincing" (to the Soros et al "legalization" crowd that he "works for")? As a result, he's now afraid to talk about the subject because, with all the new information, what he wrote in "Acid Dreams" is clearly "wrong" (which, according to the High Frontiers interview, he knew when he wrote it.) How embarrassing! What LSD needs is a robust (and well-circulated) "alternative history" and then let the reader make up their own minds. The whole notion of "evidence" (in the "documented" sense) is an academic mind-trap that is as *obsolete* as the academy itself . . . !!REFERENCEShttp://www.alternet.org/story/146393/how_stanislav_grof_helped_launch_the_dawn_of_a_new_psychedelic_research_erahttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-nazi-scientists-inspired-the-cia-to-use-lsd-2014-2 From about 1948 to 1953, former Nazi scientists and CIA interrogators began to use LSD as an advanced interrogation technique, according to the new book "Operation Paperclip" by journalist Annie Jacobsen. The CIA saw LSD as a potential “truth serum," according to FOIA documents obtained by Jacobsen, but it turned out to be an active metaphor for Cold War paranoia. The work took place inside a clandestine facility in the American zone of occupied Germany, called Camp King. The facility’s chief medical doctor was Operation Paperclip’s Dr. Walter Schreiber, the former Surgeon General of the Third Reich. When Dr. Schreiber was secretly brought to America—to work for the U.S. Air Force in Texas—his position was filled with another Paperclip asset, Dr. Kurt Blome, the former Deputy Surgeon General of the Third Reich and the man in charge of the Nazi’s program to weaponize bubonic plague. LSD was tested twice on suspected Soviet spies captured by the Nazis as well as by army officer-turned-CIA scientist Frank Olson. Merkur, Dan, “Hidden Manna and the Holy Grail: The Psychedelic Sacrament in Arthurian Romance”.http://www.danmerkur.com/onlinewritings/Grail.PDF“From beginning to end the primary wonder of the grail was its wondrous provision of allmanner of food, a motif that had earlier been prominent in Celtic tales of the terrestrial paradise,but had pertained to manna in the writings of St Basil of Caesarea and St Augustine ofHippo. The grail was also connected with imagery appropriate to the Eucharist in Chrétien,Robert de Boron, the Parzival, the Perlesvaus, the Queste, the prose Lancelot, the Estoire, andthe Post-Vulgate Queste. At the same time, the manna that was the Eucharist was notintended. The grail was regularly associated with visions, whether simply of a bright light or,in other accounts, complex images that sometimes developed as coherent narratives. Explicitportraits of visions were lacking only in some of the continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval,together with the German contributions, Wolfram’s Parzival and Heinrich’s Crown. Thejuxtaposition of these three elements--miraculous food, associations with the Eucharist, andthe occurrence of visions--attest unmistakably to the medieval concept of hidden manna.” At this point it should be noted that the KGB (and its affiliates) were also conducting detailed human experiments in the same timeframe -- of which little is known publically. Yes, the CIA didn't exist -- with that name -- until 1947 and, likewise, the KGB didn't exist until 1954. But these organizations were substantially the successors to organizations that were formed in WW II (and earlier), so using the terms "CIA" and "KGB" for these families of organizations are probably most convenient. Allen Dulles operated the key OSS station in Berne during WW II and later became CIA chief from 1953-1961. Dulles was ultimately in charge of MK-ULTRA and the CIA's research into LSD. When did Dulles first meet the key officials at Sandoz? From the 1940's until the late 1960's -- the period in which LSD was *discovered*, no matter which meaning you choose -- there were only two manufacturers of LSD in any scale in the world. Sandoz (Basel) and Spofa (Prague.) It has been widely documented that, as regards LSD, Sandoz operated largely under the direction of the CIA, while, it is less well documented, Spofa operated completely under the direction of the KGB. Therefore, as I have noted on many occasions, it is historically impossible to separate the discovery of the impact of LSD on humanity -- which was established in the 1950's and 1960's -- from the involvement of the CIA and the KGB. More broadly speaking, the history of LSD is intimately intertwined with the Cold War and cannot really be understood outside of this context. Tim Leary got his LSD (and psilocybin) from the CIA. So did Captain Al Hubbard. So did Humphrey Osmond. So John Beresford and Michael Hollingshead. So did everyone who is on the LSD record in the 1950's and 1960's. This means that the CIA (and its affiliates in British and Candian intelligence) were actively approving who recieved LSD from Sandoz and, according to my interviews with many participants, closely monitoring whatever this LSD was used for. This is not the time to examine the good vs. bad character of the CIA -- then or now. This is not the place to address what Tim Leary (or Frank Barron) knew about the CIA. We can deal with these issues separately, if you wish. This is also not the time to delve into whether Hofmann (and Stoll) had any additional "outside" interests that may have influenced whatever they did *before* the CIA/KGB got involved. Or, whether some surviving "Eleusis Cult" may have played a role here. Ditto for Nietzsche, Bachofen and Steiner and their associates in Basel. But this is probably the time to deal with the matter of "evidence." Because LSD is so thoroughly mixed up with "spy" organizations, we should all have some skepticism about the published reports. As any historian who has worked on the history of the CIA or KGB or MI6, etc. knows, there is a rich supply of "cover-stories" that have to be worked through and dug around. The preferred technique is to conduct lots of interviews with lots of participants and then cross-correlate all their stories. Generally these interviews are off the record and they often take considerable time to research and set up, since those involved are concerned about secrecy and often have their own axes to grind and/or blindspots. Personally, I have been involved in this field -- first as a participant and later as a researcher -- for nearly 40 years. I have conducted over 100 interviews with others who were involved and have probably gone as far in my research than John Marks, Marty Lee and Jay Stevens. Perhaps because I do not plan to write a book, I have been used as a resource by many others in their book projects. I have no particular personal feelings that I'm trying to convey and I do not have unbounded love or hate for anyone I have met in the course of my investigations -- although many are certainly memorable characters and some are even good friends. My goal is simply to get to the "truth" in these matters and I welcome any assistance. Best, Mark Stahlman New York City · · Mark Stahlman Where is the "contradiction" between what Hofmann said and what Harman/Hubbard said? Did anyone ever get Hofmann on the record regarding his own "religious" ambitions for LSD, the relationship with Anthroposophy and the Nazis or the long historic string that connected Eleusis to modern day practices? My sense is that he answered the questions that were put to him, typically by "acolytes" who were unable to muster any sense of larger context, so that his public statements were "true" but not at all complete. Thom Lyttle once arranged for me to meet with Hofmann but then other events overtook those plans and, alas, it never happened. Did anyone ever ask a *penetrating* question of Hofmann for the public record . . . ??3 hrs · Edited · Like · Alan Piper I don't want to get stuck on this point Mark Stahlman but Hofmann clearly records in his biog that his 'discovery' of the effects of LSD was due to an accidental laboratory intoxication. I take the point that you made to me previously that Hofmann may ...See More2 hrs · Like · Mark Stahlman Agreed. However, from your answer, I have to guess that no one ever asked Hofmann if he (or perhaps his boss Stoll) was *looking* for such an effect. No one argues that the 25th lysergic acid analog was a "surprise," since this was a "trial-and-error" process, like Edison finding the right material for the light-bulb filament, so that's not particularly interesting. It seems, as we've discussed, highly unlikely that NO ONE at Sandoz knew of the "religious" properties of ergot (or of Perutz's novel) -- so the only way we are likely to know what Hofmann knew (and when he knew it) is if someone asked him those questions. What is amazing about the "official" story is that it seems to be based on a complete lack of "curiousity" about what really happened. On that basis alone, it has to be categorized as "pretty lies" (told by people who didn't want to look too closely at the facts involved.)2 hrs · Like · Scott Bryson There does seem to be a trail going back to the Alchemists, European mysticism, pagan use of herbs for witchcraft & nobility indulging in various narcotics that had been common since ancient times. Then many of these groups went underground with Catholic persecutions. These seem to surface in culture in stories like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

There does seem to a gap in Mark's characterization of Esalen in that people with CIA connections like Bateson, the SRI RV people such as Targ and NLP founders were all integral.

It likely was a melting pot with spooks from both sides taking an interest. The CIA & military claimed they launched their RV & psychic research due to Russian advances, and of course they would want their researchers hanging with the Russian experts.2 hrs · Like · Mark Stahlman Right. Esalen was certainly one of the places where the CIA and KGB interfaced. My "informants" were very clear that the CIA *and* the KGB were "working together" on many aspects of all this. The notion that they were "mortal enemies" likely doesn't hold true when you get into the "alchemical" aspects of their efforts. To the extent that Willis Harman, yes, quoting Al Hubbard, was correct that the CIA was a "flaming shield protecting the gnostic truth," one has to imagine that there were those in the KGB with similar ambitions. As "alchemists," they had a much longer historic perspective than the Soviet Union or the USA of the 1950s/60s. My suggestion is that LSD was born of that "alchemical" impulse, with significant involvement from both the CIA and KGB. · · Mark Stahlman On page 372 of the 1987 "Letters Marshall McLuhan," McLuhan writes a May 14, 1969 "apology" to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (then the Bilderberg head) that begins, "It was good to be there. It is good to be back. As you know, I was a rather bad boy at Bilderberg . . . "3 hrs · Like · Alan Piper There is a great deal of interest in what you have to say here Mark. Only problem is this it would take a lot of time, thought and reading to catch up with your train of thought. I will have to check out McLuhan's Trivium.2 hrs · Like · Mark Stahlman Agreed. Iona invited me to put this out because she's working on an article (and was looking for pre-publication feedback and possibly some help). Ross Crowford and Andy Roberts (among others?) are also writing books. What I'm talking about requires a pretty thorough understanding of modern Western history -- particularly the role of the German "Rosicrucian" in that history (both in terms of the US elite "fraternities," of which "St. Anthony Hall" is likely more important than Skull & Bones, and in terms of Russian "radicalism") -- so that these events can put in context. We all have a lot to learn. For instance, it is well known among some Nietzsche scholars that he was a *major* drug-taker, including various ergot preparations (presumably for migraines.) But, given the "restrictions" placed on being such a scholar-in-good-standing, I'm told that no one dares to speculate on the relationship between drugs and his philosophy. The notion that he was actually an "Eleusinian initiate" (from his school days in Leipzig) and that Bachofen (who brought him to Basel but is rarely mentioned in the Nietzsche "critical" corpus) was his "master" against whom he then rebelled, is apparently completely outside the borders of acceptable scholarship. The affection that LSD-philosopher Michel Foucault et al show for Nietzsche (as well as the Marquis de Sade) raises questions about whether they thought these figures were also "tripping" -- which is entirely historically possible, since the Eleusinian "sacrament" was never lost. I once asked Christopher McIntosh if there was anyone who had compiled the history of the ELEUSIS notion among his followers of the "Rose Cross." Yes, the "code-name" for Ingolstadt, the HQ of the actual historical Illuminati was Eleusis. He agreed that it was a very important topic and said he would put in it his "drawer" for future consideration. I hope that he does take it up one day -- http://www.amazon.com/Rose.../dp/1438435606/ref=sr_1_1...The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and...www.amazon.com Examines the relationship between diverse iterations of Rosicrucianism and the p...See More As everyone knows (or should by now), the European Union is *not* going to achieve political unification. Period. The Protestant North will not join with the Catholic/Orthodox South, reflecting the very same divisions that gave us the Reformation (and the Rosicrucians and LSD) in the (very long ago) first place. The GLOBALISM agenda as completely collapsed, largely as a result of the rise of the BRICS -- none of which want to be a part of any "World Order." China is the most dynamic place on earth today -- likely to be the largest source of scientific research in a decade or so -- and while they will be polite and respectful, they are fully confident that their *civilization* is at least the equal of anything ever produced in the West. Without China (or Brazil or India or Russia), there can be no "World Order." That is what is being fought over in the Ukraine right now, where "World Order" has already been defeated (unless you actually believe what is being said on CNN). Once again, as important as these "theories" (conspiracy or otherwise) are important for the self-identity of many involved (including Mr. Irvin etc), they are NOT an expression of reality and do NOT deserve a *public* effort at rebuttal. –mark The closest they came to the "LSD plot" was the (Nelson) Rockefeller Commission, which was a part of "cleaning out" the CIA of the "old guard" who *had* been involved with LSD, leading to the promotion of the "faked" MKULTRA files that got me started with my interviews. David Rockefeller is the only one alive (at 98) and will die any day now. His "globalist" (aka "World Order") crew *was* a dominant force 40 years ago but has been in decline since. Their "Waterloo" was Vietnam and their last gasp was the Trilateral Commission. They got Jimmie Carter but then he went down in flames. My best book I know of chronicling their rise (and fall) is "The Chairman," telling the story of John J. McCloy, who, like the rest of them, was *not* replaced -- leading to what many now call "neo-liberalism" which, unlike the fabled "World Order" is every-man-for-themselves, as any semblance of an "elite" has evaporated in the West. http://www.amazon.com/The.../dp/0671454153/ref=sr_1_1... Another book worth reading is David Horowitz's "The Rockefellers." in which he chronicles how things were falling apart by the time you got to the generation after the "Brothers" (who were the third generation, starting with John D. Sr.) Horowitz had an affair with David's daughter Abby (named after the brother's mother and patron of the MoMA, or as Nelson called it "mommies museum") to get the "dirt" for the book. If you are in the NYC area, I highly recommend a trip to their ancestral "lair" known as Kykuit in Pocantico Hills. Take the *full* tour which includes the grounds (the only part designed by JD "Junior") and be sure to go to the "Cave Room" that is underneath the statue of Aphrodite (and behind Nelson's Picasso tapestries from inside the house.) http://www.amazon.com/The.../dp/0030083710/ref=sr_1_1... Like the biblical Second Coming, these things will happen when they will happen and trying to *accelerate* them (i.e. make them "immanent" in your own lifetime) is, ultimately, nothing but stupid human PRIDE -- which, where I come from (i.e. Ireland), is a deadly sin. The fact that the "Rosicrucians" are (mostly) Protestant is no accident. Ultimately, what the Protestants were "protesting" was the way the Catholics refused to jump on the end-of-the-world bandwagon, despite the attempts of the Franciscans (many of whom were remnant "Cathars") via Joachim of Fiore etc. The ongoing attacks by "psychedelicists" on the Catholic Church, centuries after that Church was in a position to "suppress" anyone, reflects that very old animus. In many ways, the world we live in is the direct product of those people who were in a "hurry" to get to the "promised land." For instance, that's why the Industrial Revolution started in England and not Italy or Spain. The Hale-Bopp cultists have a lot in common with the LSD "Eleusinian" schemers and with Isaac Newton and his Royal Society of London. Get me the hell outta here! <g> For (many of) them, it is the *world* that has fallen (not just man) and, therefore, it is the world (not your own soul) that must be "saved" . . . !! Acid Dreams, Martin Leepage 115: "In September 1965 Michael Hollingshead returned to hisnative London armed with hundreds of copies of the updated Book of the Dead andfive thousand doses of LSD (which he procured from Czech government laboratoriesin Prague)." And communism did collapse, though not right then, and acid did havequite a bit to do with it. Charter 77, the Czech human rights organization, wasfounded by Vaclav Havel in defense of the Plastic People of the Universe, apsychedelic band inspired by the Velvet Underground. Havel himself was in New Yorkin 1968, listening to the Velvets and dreaming, no doubt, of a way out of Cold Warideology.” Mark - The Soviet Union. Mother Russia. Perhaps the least well understood place on earth for many of us in the West. Dangerous. Religious. Rich. Up to their dachas in drugs and dirty tricks. I've got a couple shelves of books on the world's various "intelligence" services and the accounts of "Soviet Psychiatry" are the among most interesting reads. I've managed to collect a dozen Russian friends in NYC and the stories they tell are far more dramatic than anything I've heard about Berlin or Vienna or Beijing. If you don't read the language, then you would have no idea what sorts of "wild ideas" get published there. A few years ago, there was a prime-time television documentary about how G. I. Gurdjieff was the "occult" master for *both* Hitler and Stalin. If you don't speak the language, then whatever you have heard has already gone through a "filter" that blocks all the idiomatic and just-between-us sensibility that pervades everyday conversation. To get a glimpse at the sweep of Russian history, which unlike hereabouts, is often very much front-of-mind for contemporary Russians, take a look at James Billington's "The Icon and the Axe." For our purposes, perhaps it is enough to note that Russia has long been the home for every "esoteric" *religious* notion we have ever (and sometimes never) heard of; where to be an intellectual often meant you belonged to a "cult" or two-or-three. You think that the Bolsheviks were "atheists" who stamped out the occult? To the contrary, they welcomed the support of many such groups and often incorporated them into their "secret services." When the Wall came down, I'm told that "New Age" bookstores sprouted quickly on hundreds of street corners in Leningrad and Moscow. There is a growing English language literature on some of this, including Bernice Rosenthal's 1997 "The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture." Last year there was a fascinating event in NYC called "Global Forum 2045: New Strategies for Human Evolution." www.gf2045.com/speakers It was organized by Russian Internet-advertising entrepreneur Dmitri Iskov and took over Lincoln Center for 3 days, with 1500 attending. Their stated goal is loading human personalities into robots by 2045. Their unstated goal is to participate in the building of autonomous war-bots. Ray Kurzweil gave a keynote. Robert Thurman (representing the Dalai Lama) and a (slightly discredited) Russian Orthodox theologian sat on a concluding panels of "world religious leaders." I was in the front row and mesmerized. From what I could tell, I was one of the few "Westerners" who befriended the large Russian contingent -- including going back to their hotel for the catered lunch with them. They are deeply interested in the *religious* implications of "emergence" (among other things) and are happy to discuss how what is treated in English as "cutting-edge" science (without any "esoteric" undertones) is really a re-awakening of the same "Cosmosist" ideas that were widespread a century ago. In Russia, there are many highly-placed Academicians who are studying such things -- very much in the open, very much with "official" support. And, you think that the Russians had nothing to do with LSD in the 1960s . . . ??GF2045: GLOBAL FUTURE 2045 - INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS gf2045.com One of the Russian "specialties" is poison. If it comes from a plant or a test-tube and it can effect your body or your mind, the Russians have been studying it for a long time. Take all those ancient plant-medicine pharmacopoeia's you have heard about and make them the focus of state-based research laboratories. An account of some aspects of this is Boris Volodarsky's 2009 "The KGB's Poison Factory." It is ostensibly organized around the 2006 Litvenenko assassination in London but also names some names and goes over some of the "chemical" organizational structure of the KGB (and its predecessors.) One wonders what Dr. Grof might think about all of this? Has anyone asked him? http://www.amazon.com/KGBs.../dp/0760337535/ref=sr_1_1...KGB's Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenkowww.amazon.com In late November 2006 the whole world was shaken by a ruthless assassination in ... See More The Search for a Truth Serum, http://realitysandwich.com/218607/the-search-for-a-truth-serum/ The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians: The World's Most Mysterious Secret Society Paperback by Tobias Churton For nearly 400 years, incredible myths and stories have been woven around the “invisible” Brothers of the Rose Cross, the Rosicrucians. It is said that they possessed the secret of man and God, that they could turn lead into gold, that they governed Europe in secret, that theirs was the true philosophy of Freemasonry, and that they could save--or destroy--the world. In The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians, Tobias Churton, a “perfected” Knight of the Croix and the Pelican (18th degree, Ancient and Accepted Rite), presents the first definitive historical and philosophical view of this mysterious brotherhood. Starting at its beginnings in Germany in 1603, Churton unveils the truth behind the complex story that underlies the Rosicrucian movement. He explains its purpose, the motives of its earliest creators, and the manifestos “accidentally” published in the seventeenth century that emerged at precisely the time when modern science was emerging. He details the people who influenced its development--including Johannes Kepler, Robert Fludd, and Sir Francis Bacon--and the ties between the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and Templars. He also shows how Rosicrucianism shaped the mythology and spiritual consciousness of both North and South America and reveals that there are many Rosicrucian fraternities still active throughout the world today. TOBIAS CHURTON is a lecturer on Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry at Exeter University, which offers Britain’s only master’s program in Western Esotericism. The author of Gnostic Philosophy, The Magus of Freemasonry, and Freemasonry: The Reality, he lives in England.